Support Media Literacy for Kids in Rural India

A new cohort of children from 4 schools around the Agastya Campus Creativity Lab began the journey into the world of media this quarter.The second year of the program began in July 2022 and will be completed by March 2023. The highlights from this quarter include:

SchoolSessions

• Before the school sessions began, an annual plan was prepared by the instructors in July, which included the addition of new activities and some modification to the existing curriculum.

• There were 108 unique children and 1164 exposures from four schools in Kuppiganipalli, Kalavanchi, Yamiganipalli and Kamasamudram for the first cohort that started in August. 

• By the first week of September, the children completed the introduction sessions and pre-production. Production of final films, storybooks and audio began during the final week of the same month.

• There were several outreach sessions conducted for children who could not visit the campus using MediaKits.

Kalakootami

• A Kalakootami fair was organized in September at the Zilla Parishad High School in Settepalli.Children presented photographs and storybooks that they had created.They expressed their joy and excitement at being able to share their work with their peers, teachers and community members.

• Through the one-day exhibition we were able to reach 35 Young Instructor Leaders, 397 children  and over 30 teachers.

Feedback

“I can look at a picture and write a story based on it. I learnt how to take pictures and how beautiful nature can be.Of all the beautiful things in nature,I love flowers the most.I feel happy when I share what I know with others. I can convert images into words andstoriesinto photographs."- K.Nethra, ZPHS Settepalli.

Training and Skill-Building:

• A training session was organized for the instructors on how to shoot videos using agimbal. They also learnt advanced editing and colour grading on Adobe Premiere Pro. from Mr.Muthukrishnan and Mr. Bhoopathi, professional videographers and editors from Chennai.

• On the 19th of August the MediaArts team celebrated World Photography Day with a photo scavenger hunt. The participants were other instructors from the Agastya campus who took part in the event with gusto. At the end of the day, they receiveda printed copy of the photographs they had clicked.

Links:

• http://www.agastya.org
• http://www.facebook.com/Agastya.Foundation
• https://twitter.com/agastyasparks