Date: 12 September 2025
Location: Creative School, Bileshivale, Bengaluru
The BhāratShakti team was invited to conduct a day-long workshop for about 90 students (ages 3-9) on the topic of Art Appreciation at Creative School in Bileshivale area, Bengaluru. The specific topic was taken up under a larger theme – “Kala, Sanskriti evam Sadhana’ which made it possible to bring in an aspect of cultivating soul-values as part of the overall learning experience. The value chosen for the workshop was Gratitude, which was incorporated seamlessly into several art-based activities during the workshop.
This workshop was part of an ongoing learning initiative for children and youth titled ‘Invoking Shakti’ developed by the BhāratShakti team, and is one of the several activities regularly being planned under a larger collaboration emerging between The Creative School, a unit of The Healing Circle, Bengaluru and BhāratShakti, Sri Aurobindo Society. See HERE for the various works we have been doing with the school for the past several years.
The workshop conducted on September 12, 2025 focused on providing an experiential understanding to the young students of selected aspects of the spirit and forms of Indian art and art appreciation. A range of age-appropriate learning activities for the young children were designed including: storytelling sessions, chanting sessions, crafts activities, practice sessions, short performances and cultural activities. The workshop planning and organization team from BhāratShakti comprised of Dr. Beloo Mehra, Director; and Ms. Biswajita Mohapatra, Research Assistant. The team worked intensively on a number of details for the workshop, in discussions with Ms. Dhivya Naren, Principal of the Creative School. Many teachers from the school were a great help in helping with the workshop organisation and managing the logistics throughout the day with the children’s groupings and other arrangements.
The day began with a chanting session in which all the children and teachers along with us chanted Gayatri Mantra from the Rigveda and Sri Aurobindo’s Mantra Om Anandmayi Chaitanyamayi Satyamayi Parame. Dr. Mehra then also taught the children a simple shloka from Hitopadesha – which speaks of the idea of Vasudhaiv Kutumbakam. She explained the meaning of the shloka and the children and teachers repeated the mantra a few times. Dr. Mehra said that she will take up that mantra for deeper learning during the next year’s Invoking Shakti workshop, and by briefly introducing them to this shloka she intended to raise the curiousity.
Next was a storytelling session in which Dr. Mehra shared a story from the Panchatantra which highlighted the value of Gratitude. The story focused on how animals also practice the value of gratitude and sometimes human beings forget its significance and do things with a selfish attitude. The children found the story deeply intriguing and asked several insightful questions.
This value of gratitude was also taken up in short skits that the children in small groups practiced and performed under the guidance of Ms. Mohapatra. Through their skits, different groups of children highlighted why it is important to be grateful to parents, teachers, Mother Nature, Sun, doctors, soldiers, and farmers.
The younger children were asked to colour some sketches which highlighted motifs and themes from various forms of Indian art including diverse painting styles of India, Indian dances, Indian musical instruments and more. This activity was also practiced in silence to inculcate the value of concentration while doing any work. Soft music was played in the background to help children concentrate. Another activity included cultivating an awareness of Navarasa with small flash cards on each of the rasa-s. This activity also included practicing different expressions related to different emotional states, or rasa-s. Children found this activity highly engaging and participated with lot of joy, especially when they were learning about Hasya rasa.
The last part of the day-long session including showing a couple of short films on Ajanta and Ellora. This session was meant for the group of children and teachers watched who will soon be going on a field trip to these places. After the short documentaries, Dr. Mehra shared a few specific details about these magnificent cave temples and monasteries and brought out a few stories about some of the sculptures and paintings children will be seeing during their trip. She informed the teachers that a 150-poster exhibition has been put on display at the school’s larger campus at Freedom Land which will help teachers prepare better before the upcoming field trip.
Dr. Mehra also informed children of the few interesting facts about how these caves were built, who were the sculptors, how they were hidden for several centuries, etc. The intention was to raise sufficient curiousity among the children so that they will go through their field trip experience with mindfulness and awareness. Dr. Mehra also brought in the important aspect of preserving our rich cultural heritage through simple anecdotes and observations.