Tieing up loose ends, I realize I never did publish a blog entry about the first videos of Railway or Seethafalmondi schools! I suppose at the time my mind was still too preoccupied by new accents and auto-rides and spicy curry to keep track. But as both schools finish up their final projects, it’s a good chance to look back at where we came from.

We are lucky that Railway was our first experience with Hyderabad government schools; the girls’ confidence showed us the potential of 8th class students, and caused us to push for more creativity at other schools. As an artmaker myself, I ask a lot of questions about how and what others make. RW girls were happy to share their favorite art practices at school: classical Indian dance, muggu, and friendship bands. Looking back, I see behaviors that held true through all projects: Priyanka will do the most animated voiceover, Thanuja and Srujana will rewrite and rewrite until I physically remove the script from their hands, and Sunaina and Manaswini will always shyly volunteer to act the roles of best friends.

Our Culture & Art from The Modern Story on Vimeo.

Seethafalmondi started out chaotic, mostly because of the language barrier (mainly Telegu-medium) and the inconsistent and limited classroom space at their school. Both these factors led us directly into physical making, and the re-telling of familiar stories. The students are smart, hard-working, creative, and the work they composed clearly shows it. The first project was an illustrative photo story of poems which shows the diversity of languages spoken in the school. There are poems in Hindi, in Telegu, and in English. Each group of students took on two poems; one of which they illustrated with a series of paintings, the other of which they acted out. I will follow up more with the final project, but it is fascinating to see how, despite different prompts and new equipment, we ended up in a very similar place.

Languages of Poetry from The Modern Story on Vimeo.