Till last August, Samiya Verma, a class VIII student of Bal Bharati School in Delhi’s Pitampura had not heard about Phad art, which has its origins in Bhilwara district, Rajasthan. The rainbow-coloured palette of the 600-year-old traditional folk art attracted the young teenager, an artist herself, when she attended workshops to learn the patterns and strokes from traditional Phad painters. Today, Samiya is committed to learning and painting more of Phad to express herself better.
For about a year now, students like Samiya from about two dozen schools across the country have chosen to learn and use the traditional art work to comprehend their school lessons outside the classroom.
“Art is a powerful teaching tool,” says Kartik Gaggar, who initiated art-integrated learning for students to help them develop curiosity about their curriculum and also learn about age-old art forms that exist in the country.
Kartik helms Rooftop, a community-driven art experiences marketplace app which makes traditional Indian art forms accessible to all. The Phad Se Padh (Study with Phad) initiative was launched in association with the Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum Trust.
Art integrated learning for school students | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
Given Phad’s story telling format, Kartik felt it would be a handy module to engage children in learning their school syllabus better, especially after two years of online coaching during the pandemic.
He says, convincing schools about the utility of the programme was not easy and coordinating with teachers and students was also a challenge in the beginning. But what started in a Jaipur school gradually found acceptance in more schools across Delhi, NCR, Mumbai and Rajasthan over the last one year. Students, teachers and parents are beginning to understand the joy of experiential learning.
Samiya, who volunteered to join the programme, now feels art should be incorporated in the school syllabus permanently. “We chose civil disobedience movement to explain through Phad. We realised that art is a fantastic medium to learn; the colourful paintings depicted our language of understanding powerfully,” she says.
Feedback is now encouraging kartik to take the Phad Se padh programme to 350 CBSE schools over the next 10 years. “Art gives insights into society and my objective is to bring a new perspective to learning in school,” he says. Teachers and students willing to try alternate style of teaching and learning are taught the elements and intricacies of Phad painting by nine master painters from Bhilwara, arranged by Rooftop.
The students are free to choose any chapter from any subject and put it across through the medium of Phad. “It helps them to hone the importance of creativity while enhancing knowledge about the subject,” says Kartik, who also wishes to see more subjects and different concepts from the daily curriculum integrated with art.
Art-integrated learning for school students | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The paintings made by different sets of students in different schools were based on themes such as water conservation, instruments of swaraj, stories of Akbar-Birbal, Kabir ke dohe, Netaji Subhash Bose, medieval history of India, life of Ashoka, history of textiles, evolution of money, Gandhiji’s salt satyagraha and so on. Kartik says the initiative aligns with the New Education Policy 2022 and helps students learn better in school.
Cultural awareness and expressing with imagination and clarity in understanding are integral to a child’s development, says Deepti Jain, art teacher at Salwan Pblic School Gurugram. Over a period of six months she coordinated with social science department and helped the students to figure out stories and concepts from the school text books. Her team of 60 students from classes IX to XII, chose Waterman of India, Rajendra Singh of Tarun Bharat Sangh as the theme of their Phad painting measuring 24 feet X five feet.
Art integrated learning for school students | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
“The children were encouraged to do deep research on the subject andit led to a content explosion!” she says. Students had to visualise and question the story and design it like a show. The mood board hub divided the story into parts for easy dissemination of information such as the root cause for water scarcity and its fall out as village women had to walk long distances daily to fetch water; they got dehydrated and had to spend money on treatment. To avoid this, johars were built and rainwater collected. After initial scepticism, people started believing in the concept. “The veritable amalgamation of narratives introduced a new pedagogy in the art of storytelling,” she adds.
“We had lot of creative freedom and turned in a series of interesting stories from our Freedon Struggle, just the way our grandmothers used to tell us stories in our childhood,” says Vidushi Agarwal, studying in Adarsh Shiksha Niketan, Delhi. “I have learnt how to make boring chapters from text books fun to learn with paintings that are interactive.”
