Ambedkar Festival – A participatory show curated for school children 2022
Ambedkar Festival
A participatory show curated for school children 2022
Video link- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei0I7lrWijM
I have been working on the caste and social conscious pedagogy in the school for several years now and from the past 4 years celebrating Dr. B. R. Ambedkar’s birth anniversary ,his vision and key concepts of the constitution through interactive and participatory installations. This conversation is important to have with students because they are only aware that Dr. Ambedkar is the builder of the constitution but not aware about his other contribution towards the society. Also need to build these discussions with students because most of them belong to the privileged families and caste/ gender/ class based discrimination start from the schools.
“It was, indeed, a way of life, which recognizes liberty, equality, and fraternity as the principles of life and which cannot be divorced from each other: Liberty cannot be divorced from equality; equality cannot be divorced from liberty. Nor can liberty and equality be divorced from fraternity. Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things,” Dr B R Ambedkar had said.
Education is fundamental for achieving full human potential, developing an equitable and just society, and promoting humanitarianism. This process envisions an educative process that is both holistic and integrative in approach.
We are celebrating Dr. Ambedkar’s vision, thoughts and preamble of the constitution which binds all the individuals of the country together. Through the exploration of Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity we wish to make students think, explore and discuss these ideas. We integrate these events to broaden our school’s vision ‘Education for Life’. We would like to extend the learnings and concepts of our community, and surroundings to the corridor spaces. This event will be open to everyone in the SNS community – students, teachers, admin staff and support staff.
In this event, the School community engaged with an open mic activity where they were requested to come together and sing songs and poems. In the interactive installation display section, they did the collective embroidery work of the constitution. Also, there will be a display of Dr. Ambedkar’s rare photographs and a thought-provoking activity that made students think about social inequality In the sound piece section ‘YE KAUN’, audios of Dr. Ambedkar has played on the screen and students listened to them and reflect through a questionnaire. Students had given the prompts, and images and they will create visuals/ posters in groups.
