Come Friday, and a mobile cart will come alive with colours and creativity as a community art event gets under way in Auroville. Hosted by Sankalpa: Art Journeys, a sub-unit of Thamarai in Auroville, the ‘Art Cart’ will feature a mobile structure stocked with art supplies, which will serve as an interactive installation at Visitor's Center adjacent to Dreamer's Café.
“This community art event is about facilitating spaces for creative expression,” says Krupa Jhaveri, International Art Therapist and Art Director at Sankalpa. The Art Cart, loaded with tempera paints, oil pastels, markers, pencils and recycled paper, will not only open up spaces for self-expression, it will help people create their work of art together. Sankalpa already hosts the Art Corner at Le Zephyr Café, the social space and eatery outlet in Auroville, since mid-July and will now shift base to the cart. Art Cart opens on Tuesdays and Fridays from 6 to 10 pm. with each evening having a different theme for inspiration. The event is part of the global art movement, Art Break Day spearheaded by the US-based Art is Moving which seeks to connect communities through the medium of art.
The art collective in Auroville will be joining 30 locations across the world as part of the movement.
Art Cart, supported by Auroville’s Project Coordination Group, marks the second annual community art engagement for Sankalpa. A couple of months ago, it joined the global Art Break Day connecting communities in Auroville, visitors and people from villages through art.
The Sankalpa philosophy is based on a belief that art as a creative expression of the self can be the first step to the deeper realm of art therapy.
