A key focus at Sarmaya is to use our diverse, multi-genre collection to build awareness and engagement with Indian art, history and culture for children and young adults. We believe in collaborative engagement and team up with partners to access and reach children and communities across the country. We recently collaborated with Pratham Education Foundation and are excited to share the fun modules we have built together.
Pratham is one of the largest non-governmental organisations working in the education sector in India, focusing on high quality, replicable interventions to address gaps in the education system. Sarmaya is collaborating with Pratham’s digital arm, Hybrid Learning or H-Learning. Since its inception in 2015, the H- Learning program has been implemented in over 800 villages of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. The program caters to children in the age group of 10-14 with different levels of learning comprehension. These learning resources are accessed by over 60,000 learners on tablets across 1000 communities in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.
The Sarmaya team has worked with Pratham to develop digital resources focusing on art forms in India. We are very excited to create a series of learning resources that are educational and entertaining, and inspired by the art forms we have in our collection. We decided to begin with indigenous or folk art. As living traditions, these forms are deeply embedded in the cultural ethos, symbolism and traditions practised and recognised in India. Through these videos, we wanted to share knowledge about performative and visual folk art in an entertaining, engaging form to encourage children to observe, imagine and think critically about art.
We have developed a learning module with 6 interactive videos that introduce the students to folk art in India, diving deeper into these incredible arts from across India Pattachitra, Madhubani or Mithila, Mata ni Pachedi and Tholu Bommalaata. Find the videos on our Learning Resources page. The modules incorporate activities for the students to do once they complete watching the videos.
The next phase of our collaboration with Pratham Education is to conduct art workshops in 13 district centres. Through these workshops the children will explore creating art pieces inspired by the forms they have learnt and observed through the Sarmaya videos.