Peace arts and some randomness

The peace arts festival that stretched from 3rd to the 5th brought together a wide array of people and promoted the creative arts as models of social change. It was an informal way of introducing writing, music and paper making to the audience and letting us explore at how to look at oneself, the world and at inculcation of creativity which we often neglect because of our various daily commitments.

The first workshop was conducted by Ms Melissa Pritchard, author and professor of writing at Arizona State University. She started by talking about the Four fold creative process which was about preparation and commitment to ones writing, followed by a keen sense of observation and listening power to the final shaping up of the story and finally letting go of it once it is done. Various techniques and devices such as the Da vinci Device and the memory exercise was practiced which helped us chalk out our stories from the mundane. Using everyday themes it is possible to write great narratives as she showed us through these exercises. Finally we ‘cooked up a story’ and finished the days session.

The second day had Melissa Walker, a music researcher from Arizona conducting breathing exercises and teaching us the basic techniques of sound and singing. Melissa's research is pretty exciting. She has got a grant to travel in India and collect poetry and writings from women who have been trafficked or belong to such families and are living in a vulnerable atmosphere. These poems would later be put together, translated and given music. Melissa plans to perform this at a concert (also under her grant) and produce a CD, the proceedings of which would go to these various organisations that had helped during the research and data collection.

The third workshop was taken by Drew Mattot, a professional papermaker. He explained how paper could be made from everyday things like the previous day’s movie ticket to the old t-shirt we do not wear. He showed us models of the pulp maker and samples of paper he had made. We were pretty enthralled to hear about the process. He then spoke about his various other projects (like the deep fried books project where books were fried and then vacuum sealed, do not even ask me why) By the end of the workshop we all had chosen book covers made from hand made paper and learnt various forms of paper folding and collating them together we learnt how to make an ‘artist book’

The fourth day was not really a part of the peace arts project but it does deserve to be mentioned. As a part of Melissa Walker’s research I spoke about earlier, I took her to SANLAAP, a Calcutta based NGO working with trafficked children and those children who live in vulnerable areas. Melissa Pritchard also accompanied us and she took a poetry writing workshop there and surprisingly within an hour we had sixteen beautiful poems about listening and hearing closely to what the poets can hear. I translated a few of them and both the Melissas were pretty stunned at such beautiful creations. Melissa Walker then sang a song much to the group’s amusement and then interacted with various children and adolescents of that centre. We finished off the day by visiting New Light, Kolkata where we interacted with the children of women who were primarily prostitutes and observed them in their natural environments for sometime.
Just before leaving Melissa asked me if I would be willing to be a part of her project formally, to which I readily jumped. So I am now going to be helping her in collecting and putting together the various poems and translating them to English. The project is funded by Arizona State University and is a brilliant way of outreach for the various voices in India who come from red light areas or have been trafficked to tell their story through their own unique creative narrative to the world at large. I am really looking forward to being a part of this project till its completion.

:-)

Relevant links that you might want to check

Melissa Pritchard
Melissa Walker
Drew Matott