TGLife
Art historian from Santiniketan Prof Soumik Nandy Majumdar delivered a talk, ‘The Thinking Eye - Art appreciation for children’ aiming to motivate the art teachers to add on art appreciation to their existing methods of teaching and inspire the children to ‘look and enjoy’ art. The lecture, organised by the Institute Menezes Braganza (IMB) in association with the Foundation for Indian Art and Education (FIAE) and the All Goa Art Masters Association (AGAMA) enlightened the audience.
Prof Majumdar who has worked with children from the rural and urban areas of West Bengal for a decade, deliberated the concept and objective of Art Appreciation course for children explains that art appreciation course for children is essentially about instilling the joy of ‘looking at art’ in them. Visual education in our country is primarily limited to teaching art and craft as in ‘making’ art. Art Appreciation course on the other hand aims at inspiring the children to ‘look and enjoy’ art. It is conceived as a training of the visual sensibilities of children with reference to artworks created by the great artists across different traditions. The objective of the proposed course is to help the children cultivate a sense of aesthetics and learn to respect our visual and cultural heritage.
Facilitators or teachers have a very important role to play in inculcating the visual sensibilities in children through well planned sessions. Facilitators need to prepare well in advance on several counts – from selection of art works to the modes of interactions through which the children are to be engaged. Several questions arise like, ‘What kind of pictures should be shown to the children?’, ‘How does the teacher elicit response?’, ‘How does the teacher develop the course sequentially?’, ‘How does the teacher make the course enjoyable for the children?’ et al. Thus an orientation program is needed to discuss and resolve these crucial issues.
The course includes four days basic (Part I being conducted now) + four days advanced orientation program (Part II to be conducted tentatively in January/February 2020) for the teachers. At the end of Part I, a reporting system by the trainees, to the Directorate of Education and FIAE will be put in place to monitor the implementation and the results of the program.
