Siddappa Biradar

Siddappa Biradar is an Assistant Teacher at the Government High School, Chibbalageri, Uttara Kannada District. His participation in the arts integrated training programme conducted by IFA at Yellapura this year triggered his current project. Being one of the most respected teachers in the region, he has engaged with the community at an individual level building relationships to ensure that the children attend school regularly and are not taken out to help their parents in earning their livelihood. He has also managed to employ activity based learning in the school, which has given him statewide recognition. His participation at another training programme of the Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (CCRT) at New Delhi opened up possibilities for him to work in the field of puppetry and use it in classroom teaching.

Using the playfulness of the various puppetry forms of Karnataka, Siddappa plans to engage the eighth and ninth grade students to understand the entire process of making and performing with puppets. His project aims at helping the children learn how to make simple puppets out of easily available and waste materials. This, he believes will open possibilities for his students to understand environmental issues of waste and recycling. He will also take them through the details of engineering various kinds of puppets that will enable them to understand scientific concepts around material and their usage. Thus both the science and the aesthetics of puppet production will be focused upon. Emphasis will also be given to learning how to write simple narratives as scripts for these puppets to perform. He will invite puppeteers, writers and singers to the school and run a series of workshops for the children to learn about the performance aspect of puppetry. The ten month engagement will conclude with a performance at the school with the students, teachers, artists and the community.

The deliverables of the project to IFA together with reports will include audio-visual documentation of the workshops, images, and a ten to twelve minute video document of the entire project.  

This grant was made possible with support from Citi India.