The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : An exciting world of arts and crafts awaits them

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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

An exciting world of arts and crafts awaits them

Staff Reporter

100 children take part in five-day workshop, on at Government museum

— Photo: M. Vedhan

Enhancing skills: Commissioner of Museums Shanthini Kapoor with the participants at the inauguration of the summer workshop in Chennai on Monday. P. Iyamperumal, Executive Director of the Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre, is in the picture.

CHENNAI: For around 100 children, it will be a novel experience, learning to put on paper their imagination.

They will be participating in the five-day summer workshop for children aged between 9 and 16 years, being organised from Monday by the Government museum at its premises in Egmore. The workshop will introduce the children to the world of arts and crafts.

Faculty from the Government Fine Arts College, Egmore, will provide training in line drawing, water colour and oil colour over the first three days.

On the fourth day, the forenoon will be spent learning Origami, the Japanese art of using paper to make animals, birds and flowers. In the afternoon, they will learn block printing on textile.

The programme will end with an art competition on Friday, for which children will be provided the required material. Prizes will be awarded on the same day in the evening.

Museum officials, who explained the significance of the event, told the participants that there was a time when artefacts of royal households were not displayed. Over a period of time, noble families were allowed to view them. Later, scholars were given permission to study the objects. Now, commoners also got a glimpse of how the royals lived.

Going to the museum helped to develop a questioning mind, said P. Iyamperumal, Executive Director of Tamil Nadu Science and Technology Centre, who inaugurated the workshop on Monday.

The workshop is free of cost and the participants’ work will be exhibited for a week after the event. Museum officials said spot registrations were also accepted.

Commissioner of Museums Shanthini Kapoor said the workshop has been organised as part of International Museum Day, celebrated on May 18 by around 20,000 museums across the world. This year’s theme is ‘museum as agent of social change and development’.

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