Darshan R Shet

This Foundation Project implemented by IFA will engage fifth and sixth grade students of Government Higher Primary School in Honnesara, Shivamogga district with the project titled – nannuru nanageshtu gottu?! (How much do I know of my city?!) Students will explore the regional history of Shivamogga with a series of lecture sessions and field visits by connecting it to their curriculum in social science and languages. Darshan R Shet will be the Coordinator for this project. 

Darshan R Shet is a theatre practitioner from Sagara taluk in Shivamogga. He has pursued Diploma in Theatre Arts from Ninasam. He has been working with various theatre groups from across Shivamogga. He has also started his own group Natanatya with the vision to create a space for dialogue around theatre education while providing a professional theatre course for children. Given his experience he is best placed to be the Coordinator of this Foundation Project of IFA. 

Shivamogga is a city of stories, historic sites, and inscriptions. While Manjunatha, a Project Coordinator from the previous year, is exploring the stone inscriptions in and around Shivamogga along with his students, Darshan, in this project, has envisioned unpacking the regional history of the city by studying various aspects like ecology, cultural practices, maps of the city, lakes and water bodies, star watching, food practices and so on. He is planning to create a participatory platform in the school for students, teachers, and parents to share their stories of the city. 

This project will invite a pool of resource persons from the city to engage in dialogues with the students not just on the beautiful and historic sites and stories of the city, but also around local conflicts, struggles, and negotiations among various stakeholders of the city. These conversations will aim to understand the city by locating it within the Sagara taluk once ruled by the well revered Keladi dynasty. 

This project has plans for a series of field visits where students will explore historic sites and the Keladi museum and document the socio-economic and cultural contribution of Keladi Nayakas to the city. This visit will be followed by group discussion in their classroom. Students will be divided into three groups for a day-long forest trek under safe guidance of teachers. Darshan will invite an herbalist to conduct a session on the flora of the forest. In the next visit, students will be taken to Bidanoor fort for site specific learning experience. They will be given topics from their social science curriculum and be encouraged to perform a short skit considering the fort as the space for performance. Darshan believes that these field visits and other theatre activities will enhance their thinking ability, communication, and research mindedness. 

Apart from the field visits, students will participate in workshops and lecture sessions to reflect on their learnings while juxtaposing their found stories about the city with lessons from their language, social science, and environmental science curriculum. Finally they will create a theatre performance, which will be followed by conversations with teachers, resource persons, and villagers.

The outcome of the project will be a performance in the presence of school staff and villagers. The deliverables to IFA with the final report will include still and video documentation of the process and the performance.

This project suitably addresses the framework of IFA’s Arts Education programme in the manner in which it attempts to help students connect their school curriculum to the stories from the regions they inhabit and communities they live with.

IFA will ensure that the implementation of this project happens in a timely manner and funds expended are accounted for. IFA will also review the progress of the project at midterm and document it through an Implementation Memorandum. After the project is finished and all deliverables are submitted, IFA will put together a Final Evaluation to share with Trustees.