October starts with "Picturing Change"!

Where do I begin to tell you of all the wonderful things that have been happening?

October started with a bang...with a great storytelling session for the Picturing Change event at Thalam Gallery in Domlur.

Let me rewind a bit to tell you that I met a wonderful soul called Mathangi in a theatre workshop. Somehow in spite of the age difference we really clicked!! We kept in touch, and I happened to keep bumping into her from time to time.

and so it happened....she invited me to do a story session for children from the Anganwadis that she was working with, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. But the request was to do it in Kannada!
That is a challenge, as I can tell in English and Tamil, but have never tried Kannada.

Luckily for me, Aparna, who I work with at Kid and Parent Foundation is fluent in Kannada, so we accepted the invitation to do a session in Kanglish (if you will pardon my typical englification of Kannada!)

Picturing Change is a wonderful idea, conceptualized by Mathangi and photographer Greeshma, to have teachers in Anganwadis capture their story and their life using simple digital cameras. These photographs speak a language of their own, as it shows a world that you and I don't have access to as outsiders.
(You can catch some wonderful images here on their FB links and here.)

Trained by Greeshma, 5 ladies have put together images that show a life filled with colour, vibrancy, love, laughter and most importantly deep emotions. As is true with any story, only when we bare our soul can we access the beauty of the narrative within. So also these images were souls bared, telling us innumerable stories through the pictures they had captured.

I am still in awe of what I saw and the feelings that went through me, just looking at those images. The play of light on a students face, the mother carrying her disabled son, a child doing yoga....so many voices, so many thoughts...

It is but apt that they invite us to do a storytelling session! So we did; the story of Rupa the Elephant, using our gigantic Story Book prop, and the MilkMan's Cow, which is based on Aparna's idea, to incorporate Indian dance forms into our story narrative.

The children were pulled into an imaginative world, but most importantly, we shared the message of Kindness and Compassion (as it was Gandhi Jayanthi) through our stories and finished off with a great Chicken Dance!

Here are some pictures for you to see...

Picturing Change was on till October 12th at Thalam in Domlur.
(In case you wish to know more then;
Mathangi is on a Fulbright Research scholarship to India and can be contacted at mathu.subramanian@gmail.com
Photographer Greeshma can be contacted at greeshma@greeshma.com)

we were also covered in the news, thanks to the wonderful response and encouragement we got from the team at Picturing Change... and you can see that here as well...

.....and of course for all your storytelling needs you can contact me!!

(keep watching this blog for loads of great stuff happening in my life...)

~ssstoryteller~