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Saturday Art Class

location_on Mumbai, India

We add the he(art) to education so that children are inspired to create with confidence.

To bridge gaps that do not focus on holistically & creatively develop children,especially those from underserved communities,our work aims to solve problems at the systemic level of Indian education and closely engages with children & educators via yearly programs. Our programs build social emotional learning skills through visual arts that aids them to thrive creatively, socially and emotionally!

HundrED 2022
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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED 2022

Holistic Education in South & South-East Asia

Web presence

2017

Established

96.4K

Children/users

6

Countries
Target group
All
Submitted
March 2020
“So just as from a biologist you learn about different functions of living organisms, can we learn from art practices and artists about expression, communication, connection, compassion? “

About the innovation

Creatively empowering children through visual arts , social and emotional learning skills.

Our Vision: A world where children are inspired to create more

Our Mission: To empower educators to help make their classrooms creative spaces.

The problem Saturday Art Class is trying to solve

  1. Due to the intersectional effects of poverty, children from under-resourced backgrounds often experience a lack of creative, social & emotional development in their formative years.
  2. These children often experience low levels of confidence, struggle with communication, building and maintaining healthy relationships & collectively problem-solving.
  3. These issues have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in absence of physical schooling; with children struggling to socially and emotionally connect with their educators.
  4. As children return to school, exposure & engagement in visual arts can aid in bridging these gaps. However, they attend schools where educators lack access to training & curriculum in arts-integrated learning.
  5. Furthermore, certain reforms exist within the Indian National Education Policy 2020, wherein their implementation is possible only by 2030 - 2040 and until then there remains a gap in the teacher training infrastructure to implement these reforms effectively within the public education system.                                                                                                                                                  

Our Solution

  1. We partner with education organizations to train and build capacity in their educators in visual arts, social-emotional skills integrated learning.
  2. Our trainings enable educators to make their classrooms safe as well as develop skills and mindsets to design creative processes.
  3. These spaces are aimed to build within students skills that will help them to thrive in the world outside.

How does Art help children in building skills that can help them to thrive in the world outside :

The universal language of art creates a space of acceptance, inclusivity, and safety in the classroom enabling children to be part of a natural and creative learning process. 

Exposing children to various forms of art and art practices encourages them to confidently and creatively express their needs, feelings, and beliefs.

Not only does this practice enrich the cultural understanding of students towards the arts, but involves them in a process of learning that provides them with a platform to effectively communicate and collaborate with their peers, and spark their imagination by learning through design, critically think and persist towards solving for problems that exist around them and show compassion for themselves and others.

Our Journey of Impact (2017-till date)

2021-22: Our Train-the-Trainer Model

  • Year-long training program | 55 educators trained, 1399 children impacted | Partner: Teach For India, Mumbai
  • 3-month training program | 19 educators trained, 400+children impacted | Partner: Reality Gives, Mumbai
  • Short format workshops | 632 educators trained, 1148 children impacted, 12 Indian regional states | Partners: Pratham Education Foundation, Forbes Marshall CSR Initiatives, Teach For India (Nationwide)

2020-21

Our Digital Resource - In My Mind

Click here to access In My Mind

A digital curriculum based on social-emotional learning, art, and creatively stimulating exercises to help provide SEL-based resources for students, educators, teachers, and parents during the “school from home” time. Since In My Mind’s release in April 2021, it has achieved the following -

  • Reached 35,791 children
  • Accessed by 270 educators
  • Reached and downloaded across 7 countries
  • This resource was also converted into an instructional video series called Everyone’s An Artist. Watch Everyone's An Artist on YouTube here

Our COVID-19 Recovery Program - Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad

  • 250 children impacted
  • 60 facilitators engaged through online classrooms
  • 15 partnerships were initiated that included other non-profit organizations, BMC schools, and shelter homes.

2017-18-19-20: Our on-ground conventional year-long program, Mumbai

  • 5083 children impacted
  • 981 volunteers engaged through our volunteering programs.
  • 30 partnerships were initiated that included BMC schools under Teach For India, Affordable private schools, shelter homes, orphanages, a cancer accommodation center, and educational foundations.
  • Achieved SEL outcomes: The academic year 2019-2020: Our assessments measured each child on the basis of Self Awareness, Self Management, and Social Awareness as our lesson plans were structured around those 3 parameters of Social Emotional Learning; Social-Awareness: 21% growth; Self-Management: 23.% growth; Self-Awareness: 22% growth


Our Program for the academic year 2021-22

For the academic year 2021-22, Saturday Art Class piloted a train-the-trainer model by partnering with education organizations to train and build capacity in their educators in visual arts and social-emotional learning skills.

Our trainings for educators work in alignment with the Indian National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) which strives to include ‘art-integration as a cross-curricular pedagogical approach that utilizes various aspects and forms of art and culture as the basis for learning of concepts across subjects. As a part of the thrust on experiential learning, art-integrated education will be embedded in classroom transactions not only for creating joyful classrooms but also for imbibing the Indian ethos through integration of Indian art and culture in the teaching and learning process at every level. This art-integrated approach will strengthen the linkages between education and culture.’(4.7, NEP 2020)


The Saturday Art Class Curriculum

The Saturday Art Class Curriculum has been designed and created keeping in mind our model above and has strung together a strong art curriculum that builds Imagination, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Perseverance, and Communication skills through a trainer model.

The National Education Policy lists several benefits of a higher quality education system that promotes multidisciplinary learning. It highlights the need for setting up an education system that promotes the holistic scientific and creative development of individuals.

Learn more about our partnerships

Teach For India x Saturday Art Class

A) Year-long partnership

Saturday Art Class designed and curated a pilot curriculum to train Teach For India Mumbai fellows across Grades 3, 5, and 6 that teach in low-income private schools and government schools.

The year-long partnership with Teach For India focused on training 55 Mumbai fellows across Grades 3,5 and 6 to enhance personal, interpersonal, and creativity skills in 1399 students with the three goals of increasing awareness, compassion, and creative expression. Fellows were also trained by expert speakers through external training sessions conducted for them.

Impact Measured:

We measured impact in form of baseline and endline assessments across the following 2 curriculum outcomes for the year 2021 - 22 for 1399 students through our partnership with Teach For India Mumbai. 

Click here:Read our entire Teach For India report that highlights the impact we created during our partnership

Testimonials:

“Over the last year, it's become more apparent than before how important social-emotional learning is - not just for students, but for adults too. Saturday Art Class does a stellar job at getting children to engage with their feelings and emotions, as well as slowly building their self-awareness - and it does this all through the enriching (and more importantly, fun) medium of art. ”- Aditya Mallya, City Director Mumbai, Teach For India

“Self-compassion has become an important part of our class culture and our daily reflections. Our students are aware of ideas like self-love, self-care,  and positive self-talk, and often try to practice them as well. We are still trying to figure out how to let self-compassion be more natural and instinctive.” - Riddhi and Gaurav, Grade 8 Teach For India Fellows at Shankarwadi MPS

B) Teach For India Institute Training:  We trained 600 fellows across India teaching primary, middle, and high school grades by implementing our In My Mind curriculum. Fellows were given the guidance in understanding the use of Social-Emotional Learning and creative expression & exploration tools required to implement the In My Mind curriculum in the classrooms. An Institute Packet was also shared with fellows along with exclusive assessments and the Saturday Art Class curriculum.

C) Safe Sharing Spaces: We provided 'Safe Sharing Spaces' to children to aid in self-recovery during the COVID-19 pandemic in the months of May 2021 - June 2021. We intervened with a total of 513 students, belonging to Elementary, Middle, and High School groups. Across 7 Teach For India cities over the course of 4 weeks. Click here to read a detailed report of our Safe Sharing Spaces sessions.

D) Educator Trainings: As part of our Train-the-Trainer model that focuses on sensitizing educators in the space of Social-Emotional Learning and art, we host monthly trainings for educators focusing on various topics and themes in the realm of SEL and well-being.

November 2021: Emotional Awareness- 

We conducted a training session for our Teach For India educators based on the theme of Emotional Awareness. The training was beautifully and interactively led by Anokhi Parikh (Co-founder of The SEL Lab) and Anum Mulla (A Writer, Editor, and Empathy and Compassion Skill Cultivation Facilitator) wherein our fellows learned about the principles of Mental States and Emotions further equipping themselves on how they can take back the theme within the classroom to cater to students emotions on a daily basis!

December 2021: Cultivating Interpersonal Awareness among student

For our December training, we partnered with Apni Shala to enlighten our educators about how they can cultivate Interpersonal awareness amongst their students. Facilitated by Saesha Pillai and Pranali Patil (Curriculum Leads at Apni Shala), the session kickstarted with a grounding movement activity followed by deep self-reflections and insight into how educators can build relationships within the classroom using practices that pave the way for healthy and authentic connections between student and teacher.

January 2022: Cultivating Empathy among students

January training for our educators led by Deepak Ramola, Founder of Project Fuel who paved the way towards gaining insightful knowledge, a peek into experiences and self-reflection for our educators. Following were 5 KEY TAKEAWAY on tools educators can use to cultivate empathy among their students:

  1. Employing creative mechanisms to visualize how you feel
  2. Perspective Sharing and Perspective Taking
  3. Creating a space for answers that are neither right nor wrong
  4. Reflection
  5. Involving students as collaborators and allowing their wisdom to be heard and share.

Watch the full session here


Saturday Art Class x Reality Gives

As part of our train-the-trainer model approach, 19 government school teachers from a Mumbai-based organization called Realitywere trained by Saturday Art Class on using the In My Mind Workbook and other resources to inform their Social Emotional Learning Instruction within classrooms. Around 50% of teachers facilitated more than 3 sessions based on the In My Mind workbooks in their classes. The majority of the teachers found that after our training sessions their SEL integrated art facilitation has improved in their classroom and feel better equipped to use the SEL resources in their classes.

Testimonials:

“ I was able to appreciate all the hard work and dedication that went into each session Saturday Art Class has delivered. Both our teams built a great relationship with open sharing and constant learning from each other which is special and something to celebrate”. - Letizia De Martino, Executive Director, Reality Gives

"The sessions conducted by Saturday Art Class have been wonderfully modeled and broken down for teachers, enabling it to be transacted in the classroom". - Lakshmi Vishwanathan, School Program Leader, Reality Gives Mumbai

"Every session was very useful for us professionally and also personally. I have learned about Social-Emotional Learning and how to implement practices within the class and in my personal life, how to engage students and how to make them comfortable in the classroom". - Grace Ambananthan, Teacher, Grade 1 and 2


Saturday Art Class x Pratham Education Foundation

Our partnership with Pratham Education Foundation, through their digital initiative - Pradigi Creativity Club, was aimed at conducting short format art-integrated interventions for children and Pratham educators. Through creative workshops, children engaged in art and craft activities. These workshops also sensitized educators in visual arts-integrated learning practices that they could learn and carry forward within their own individual classrooms, to make them creative spaces.

28th October 2021- 2nd November 2021: Eco-friendly Diwali workshops

Diwali-themed art workshops were conducted focusing and advocating on celebrating Diwali in a happy, safe, and eco-friendly manner using the medium of art.

  • 18 eco-friendly Diwali-themed art workshops
  • 341 youth coaches, 75 children
  • 7 Indian states
  • 5 Indian regional languages.

Click here to watch a glimpse of the sessions conducted

14th January 2022 - 20th January 2022: India’s Soaring Kites: Kite flying workshop

These workshops focused on enlightening children (aged 6-14 years) about the significance of colors on the Indian tricolor flag, followed by creating tricolor, eco-friendly, paper bird kites.

  • 12 bird-kite-flying workshops
  • 119 children (aged 6-14 years)
  • 12 Pratham educators trained
  • Workshops led in 12 Indian regional languages across 12 states of India.


Testimonials

“Our workshops in partnership with Saturday Art Class have been one such means where children have creatively tried and engaged with different types of content and information. The Diwali-Lantern Making workshops and The Kite Making workshops have not only enabled them to create something but using the powerful medium of art has also contributed to them being better and informed citizens of the country. Hope to continue our partnership with Saturday Art Class and give our children the much-needed creative exposure that they rightfully deserve.” - Tanushree Vyas, Content Development, Creative Arts, PraDigi Creativity Club

“Our partnership with Saturday Art Class complements our approach as they bring their expertise in designing workshops that encourage children to connect with their emotions, reflect on everyday practices, self-explore and express themselves through adorable art activities. In a survey that we conducted about our workshops, we found that our subscribers from across the country not only enjoyed creating bird kites and diyas, but also connected with the messages that were shared on the eco-friendly ways to celebrate Diwali, the kite festival, and Republic Day. We have seen both incredibly beautiful artistic creations and astounding insights that children have when given a platform such as these workshops. Moreover, our facilitators were equally excited to learn from the modules, which helped create a space for meaningful discussions and colorful artworks. - Angelina Philip, EdTech Fellow, Digital Innovations

Saturday Art Class x Forbes Marshall CSR Initiatives

Team Saturday Art Class visited the Savardari and Wasuli villages in Chakan district, Pune over the course of 3 days in November 2021 to conduct a fun-filled, colorful and eco-friendly Diwali workshop on-ground with 100+ students. Training was also conducted for 20 paraeducators belonging to non-profit organizations- Urmee and Yojak in art-integrated Social-Emotional Learning.

Click here: Watch some beautiful moments captured during our time in the villages

Testimonials

Student Testimonials

“I like Saturday Art Class because I’ve learned how to be patient with teachers and friends. I like when Didi teaches us. They also help me understand patience, discipline, sharing, kindness and good behavior." - Himanshu Yadav, 8 years old

“I like Saturday Art Class because we learn new things, about which we hadn’t ever heard of or learned. My favorite moment in class was when Didi taught us about Arunima Sinha. Kalpana Chawla and Malala on TV. We also learned about ‘sharing is caring' and helping each other. Didi also taught us that we shouldn’t fight with anybody or hurt them.”  - Tamanna Chauhan, 9 years old

Click here: Here's what our Teachers think of Saturday Art Class

"I feel happy to attend Saturday Art Class. I feel like I get a chance to participate during class. Didi and Bhaiya teach very well and organize fun activities. Because of Saturday Art Class, I understood my feelings and emotions and I was able to write a poem!" - Yasmin Pathan, 19 years old

"During Saturday Art Class sessions I learned about thoughts, feelings, what the voice inside our head is, and many activities. I learned about two words that I always keep in mind, they are Curious and Compassionate." - Fehmina Ahmed Shah, 13 years old

Click here: Watch our Students share about their artworks

Volunteer Testimonials

“Working as a Mentor for Saturday Art Class has let me contribute in a tiny way towards creating a better future for children. We ensure that despite their absence of schooling and veritable safe spaces, they can still access a fraction of education and ultimately find themselves in a comfort zone. Saturday Art Class has let me participate in a system very organically, where we continue to make the best of the situation at hand. It inspired me, motivated me on my rough days and best of all, it made me feel good about myself whenever I saw their smiling faces. I think it was a wonderful and significant experience for me!” -Shrubaboti Bose, Mentor

Serving as a Mentor at the Saturday Art Class has been a rewarding experience. My favorite part was witnessing the students express their thoughts and ideas purely and innocently, which motivated me to rediscover my artistic ability. Emotional empathy has always been a natural trait of mine, and with the supervision and rigorous art-based curriculum of Saturday Art Class, I could also strengthen my creative skills by exploring different ways for children to express their emotions.” -Shrishti Shrimali, Mentor

Our response to the global COVID-19 Pandemic: Relief and Recovery during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Saturday Art Class launched the COVID-19 Relief and Recovery Program in March 2020, which was essentially launched as a way to combat the challenges our communities were facing due to the outbreak of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown.

Our Champions Project & COVID-19 Relief Fundraiser Campaign (April 2020- September 2020): The financial ramifications of the lockdown left our students and their families without basic food supplies. Our focus was to take on Relief, by ensuring the supply of daily food essentials to families in need. We raised funds through a volunteer-driven fundraising program, called the Saturday Art Class Champions Project. The idea behind the project was to leverage community participation and teamwork to effectively work towards a solution for a larger problem. It enabled young leaders from diverse backgrounds to support Saturday Art Class’ Relief and Recovery efforts by raising funds through hosting individual crowdfunding platforms.

Here are some of the impact numbers that we documented through this program:

  • INR 42 Lakhs Raised
  • 36 Champions Activated

Our COVID-19 Recovery Program (June 2020 - January 2021): Understanding how children were still in need of safe spaces to express themselves, we wanted our impact to go beyond Relief. We wanted to work on Recovery through designing, developing, and conducting a well being based Recovery Curriculum to help communities that were facing hardships caused by the constant negativity and loss of jobs, lack of income, domestic abuse and violence, and lack of daily essentials such as food, etc caused during the pandemic. Therefore, we introduced Virtual Classrooms to implement the Social Emotional Learning and Art integrated Recovery Curriculum to address these needs.

Here are some of the impact numbers that we documented through this program:

  • 60 Facilitators
  • 250 Children
  • 85% Student Attendance
  • 15 Partner Organizations

Expanding Our Reach (August 2020-June 2021): The Virtual Classrooms Program helped us realize that the communities we worked with do not have access to technology compatible with digital learning, nor do they have the resources to invest in a relatively expensive device. Through Virtual Classrooms, we opened our doors to schools outside of Mumbai and welcomed organizations to become part of the Saturday Art Class Family from Pune City and Ahmedabad.

About the team

Manasi Mehan (Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer): Manasi is a Teach For India alumna, a Gratitude Network Alumna, and a 2020 Global Social Benefit Institute Jumpstart accelerator program for women participants. Manasi has 6 years of experience in the social sector. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Sociology.

Chhavi Khandelwal (Co-founder and Chief Design Officer):  Chhavi is an Arts For Good alumna, and has worked in programs delivering Art education in orphanages and cancer specialty hospitals. She has 9 years of experience in the art and design space and 5 years of experience in the social-education sector. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture.

Rukhmini Bhatia ( Manager, Curriculum): Rukhmini is a Teach For India Alumna and a former curriculum developer at LIDO. She is also a former graphic designer at organizations such as Godrej Consumer Products Limited and Design Orb with over 8 years of experience in the space of design. She holds 4+ years of experience in the social-education sector and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Arts and crafts along with a Postgraduate Diploma in Graphic Design.

Kristine Rodricks (Senior Associate, Curriculum): Kristine is a visual artist with 3+ years of experience in content planning and visual design for play-based learning programs. They believe that playtime, recreation, and creative expression are crucial for children's holistic development. They have used multi-media art to talk about equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community. They aspire to be a Sexuality Educator in the future where the power of art can support young children's understanding of themselves, their mental health, body, and gender identity. They hold a Bachelor's in Mass Media. 

Keerthi Sharma (Senior Associate, Curriculum) Keerthi is a former Teach For India alumna. As an educator, she believes in the transformational power of art as a means to bring change to the education sector. Her past experience includes creating art-based curriculums with strategic planning and research to build skills and values among children. Her passion and purpose lie in creating safe spaces where children can express themselves creatively and freely. She has 4+ years of experience in the social-education sector and holds a Bachelor's in Commerce and Masters in English. 

Tanushree Patel (Senior Associate, Training & Impact): Tanushree is a Teach For India Alumna and has formerly conducted a research project on bringing in entrepreneurial opportunities and sustainable energy solutions for the tribals in a remote village in Gujarat. She is passionate about integrating visual arts in school curriculums to build crucial skills in children and is committed to working with educators to enable the same. She holds 2+ years of experience in the social-education sector, holds a degree in Urban Planning and Public Administration, and has published research papers in the area of public health and social welfare.

Anaggha Nethra (Senior Associate, Training & Impact): Anaggha has 3 years of experience in the social sector and previously served as a Mentor at Saturday Art Class. She has experience in media consultancy, guest lecturing, and diverse youth leadership roles. She holds a Bachelor’s in Journalism.

Anthea Lobo (Senior Associate, Partnerships & Communications): Anthea currently manages partnerships and communications at Saturday Art Class after having grown within the organization through building on her skills in content creation, leading digital communications, and overseeing the organization's digital footprint across social media platforms. She is also a practicing artist and illustrator. She holds 2+ years of experience in the social-education sector and has completed her Bachelor's in English Literature. 

Our Advisors

Ujwal Thakar (Ujwal Impact Investors): Ujwal Thakar, a banker for 28 years, has held key senior management positions at several leading banks including Standard Chartered Bank, BNP Paribas, and Times bank. In 2002, he entered the social sector as CEO of Pratham, India's largest NGO in the elementary education space, putting to use his expertise in raising and managing funds, strategizing, and project execution. He also served as CEO of GiveIndia, a pioneering platform for philanthropic exchange.

Sandeep Rai (CEO, The Circle, Chief of City Operations at Teach For India): Sandeep started his career, with Teach For America, in a government-run school in Washington, D.C. After two years, he moved to India to help launch Teach For India and worked with hundreds and thousands of incredible leaders here to build an organization that aspires to build an India that is free of poverty and filled with love. He has authored a book called Grey Sunshine and currently is now pivoting to a part-time, senior leadership role at Teach For India to launch The Circle. The Circle aims to build networks of schools and after-school centers that are reimagining and reinventing India.

Amita Chauhan (Parle Group, SVP India, Mumbai Head): Amita has worked in the philanthropy and non-profit space for over 20 years. After working in rural India with handloom weavers for several years, she spent eight years at GiveIndia, building the Mumbai Marathon fundraising event and working extensively on their retail fundraising website. Currently, Amita is the Chairperson of the Mumbai chapter of Social Venture Partners (SVP) – a global organization that applies the principles of venture investing toward meeting philanthropic goals.

Suchetha Bhat (CEO, Dream a Dream):  Sucheta's pioneering work in developing design frameworks at Dream a Dream has firmly positioned her as a thought-leader in the space of Life skills in India. Under her leadership, the organization has grown from working with 10,000 young people in Bengaluru to over 1 million children across 5 states.

Riah Forbes (Digital Business Initiatives, Forbes Marshall): Riah Forbes helps socially impactful organizations in India use technology, data analytics, and business skills to grow their ventures. Her clients include artisan social enterprises, education NGOs, and social collectives. She completed her Masters in Business Administration from Standford University Graduate School of Business and through the years has worked with Google and leads Digital Business Initiatives at Forbes Marshall.

Bill Scull (Strategic Leader and GSBI Accelerator Mentor): Bill Scull is a strategic business leader and consultant with over 25 years of experience helping entrepreneurial companies craft effective strategies, create new products, and capture new market opportunities. Builder of marketing teams that differentiate their company, connect with customers, and drive revenue growth. Also, business coach, mentoring executives on how to raise funding and scale their businesses.

Sriram Ayer (Founder, Nalandaway Foundation): Sriram is a writer, storyteller, and social entrepreneur. He is the founder of the award-winning NGO, Nalandaway Foundation which helps disadvantaged children realize their dreams through the power of arts. Named by the Outlook Business magazine as one of the top 50 social entrepreneurs in India, he has received numerous awards, including the World Bank’s Development Marketplace award, “Architect of the future” by Waldzell Institute, and Millennium Award by FICCI/USAID.

Our Partners

Recognitions

The /Nudge Incubator Program

Selected from among 580+ applications, Saturday Art Class is a part of the 8th Cohort of The/Nudge Incubator Program. This opportunity will help our organization pave the way to scaling and reach out to many more children across India. It will help us to leverage the existing ecosystem & implement solutions to creatively empower students from low-income communities across India.

Click here: Read about the Early Stage Non-Profits Solving For Poverty Alleviation In India At Scale

Saturday Art Class Features and Publications

Our co-founders give a talk at TEDx NMIMS 2022

Our co-founders Chhavi Khandelwal and Manasi Mehan through their talk at TEDx NMIMS 2022 expressed the importance and need for art in education. They discuss the need for instilling creativity in children from an early age in the education system that contributes towards achieving key learning outcomes for them; as well as the power of the arts to bring a change in the way we perceive ourselves and the world around us.

Click here: Watch the full TEDx talk given by our co-founders on YouTube

 Projects and Workshops

Saturday Art Class  X  Jai Vakeel Foundation

Team Saturday Art Class conducted a workshop surrounding the theme of Self Love for the parents of students at Jai Vakeel Foundation. The workshop led to creating a safe space for parents by encouraging them to reflect on their unique and special characteristics; followed by painting self-portraits and parents proudly talking about their creations with each other. The objective was also to ensure our parents pay attention to their own emotions, and focus on themselves if just for a little while and we couldn’t have been happier with the result.⁣

Click here: Watch a glimpse of the workshop conducted

Saturday Art Class X Schbang For Good

Saturday Art Class also held a workshop with Schbang For Good for the girls at Sakhi For Girls Education that focused on Self-awareness and Relationship Building. The girls held conversations with partners that helped them learn about each other; followed by painting portraits inspired by modern artist Coco Davez

Click here:  Watch a glimpse of the workshop conducted

Our future plans

  1. Implement the Train-the-Trainer model with an aim to train 300+ educators from a minimum of 5 education partner organizations across India.
  2. Streamlining our Monitoring and Evaluation methods to achieve valid and accurate data to determine the impact created on the ground.
  3. Building partnerships with large-scale organizations to reach more children and scale impact.
  4. Aligning our curriculum and training design and delivery with the National Education Policy 2020, and contextualizing the policies to solve the current issues.


Additional reads

How does Social Emotional Learning cater to Holistic Education?

The National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020) underscores the importance of SEL to ensure the holistic development of children and states that the education system must aim to “develop good human beings capable of rational thought and action, possessing compassion and empathy”. However, SEL has remained largely unrecognized in the Indian education ecosystem.; its correlation with systematic influences on short- and long-term student outcomes includes reduced emotional distress, increased academic performance, increased rates of high school completion, improved mental health, and more engaged citizenship catering to the holistic development of the child.

How do we ensure Saturday Art Class students receive holistic education?

Saturday Art Class aims to fill this void by providing safe spaces for children to nurture their childhood, their dreams, and their expressions and build critical lifelong skills while they learn about global artists and art forms. This can help them understand and manage their emotions and stressors. We embed Social-Emotional learning within the low-income school systems in India with help of arts integration.

Bringing Galleries and Museums into Classroom

At Saturday Art Class, we believe art is universal, hence accessibility to art should be for all and not just for a few.  Over the past few years, we have worked with galleries & museums to make art displayed by them accessible to our students. We take inspiration from various artists and partner with galleries that showcase their work Our high-potential volunteers are trained first-hand by art galleries & museums where they build an understanding of the artist in focus' work. Mentors are trained to view the art of modern artists from around India and how to teach their work through our Saturday Art Class lesson plans. Ensuring that each artist and their work is relatable to the children, in a way for the children to then discover the connection between them and the artist’s work.


Saturday Art Class in collaboration with Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) organized training sessions for our mentors where they were exposed to 2 renowned Indian artists The mentors were introduced to Madhvi Parekh’s work and how the way she painted was an observation and expression of the people in her village. Art as medium of self-expression. It so happened that Natvar Bhaskar- one of India’s most important contemporary artists- saw his artwork being taught to our students via social media and invited our co-founders for dinner in his home in New York.

We believe that art builds connection

Through artist collaborations, we have been able to not only make art accessible but been able to build connections with artists themselves. Saturday Art Class has designed lesson plans so as to bring international art & artists into classrooms.  For example one of the leading contemporary artists of our time is a British artist called Damien Hirst, whose work our co-founders saw, displayed in a gallery in New York. We conducted a Damien Hirst inspired lesson plan back in Mumbai with our students which taught children the importance of being unique (like each dot in the painting is of a different contrasting color) but also of the importance of teamwork (however when the colors come together, it makes for a beautiful painting). 


We put these pictures up on our Instagram account and tagged Damien Hirst. When he saw pictures of our Big Little Artists using his work as inspiration and the joy it brought them, he sent Saturday Art Class a painting as a gift all the way from UK

A painting sent from Damien Hirst for SaturdayArtClass

Get a glimpse of what Saturdays look like at Saturday Art Class

Watch HERE Ranjeet, a Grade 6 Saturday Art Class student facilitates a workshop to adults at Soho House, Mumbai based on Self Awareness and Self Management through the work of Japanese artist, Yayoi Kusama

Saturday Art Class Exhibitions

The Saturday Art Class Exhibition is an End of Year Annual Event that showcases the artwork made by students throughout the year. The platform provided engages children, parents, teachers, mentors, coaches, and supporters, allowing children to not only showcase their creativity but gain a sense of achievement for the work done throughout the year. Through this end-of-year showcase, we hope to not only motivate our children but also give a glimpse of our work to the attendees as a way to advocate the need to work towards our cause. Here is how it went:

  1. Exhibtion 1.0 (2017)
  2. Exhibtion 2.0 (2018)
  3. Exibition 3.0 (2019)

*Exhibition 4.0 could not be executed due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Impact & scalability

Impact & Scalability

The role of art and aesthetics in the learning is very important and this innovation allows the learners to engage with real world issues through art. The process of implementation is also easy to replicate in other contexts.

HundrED Academy Reviews
The idea has already been widely received. It can be scaled to even more regions across south and south-east Asia. Many schools will welcome this initiative with an open mindset as this can add a lot of value and contribute to holistic development.
This innovation could allow for the students to develop greater socio- emotional health in their learning environment. Making the learner more secure and confident which in turn boosts academic learning and physical development as well.
- Academy member
Academy review results
High Impact
Low Scalability
High Impact
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Students demonstrating leadership and collaboration during Saturday Art Class
Today, our students Niharika and Arpita, under the guidance of our Teach For India Fellow Rukhmini Bhatia, took the initiative of leading a Saturday Art Class session focused on managing Actions and action words for their classmates! It's truly incredible and heartwarming to see how confidently our students were able to apply their learnings through Saturday Art Class sessions and demonstrate leadership and ownership in the classroom.
India's Soaring Kites | #RepublicDay Special #DIY Workshop for Children | #PraDigiCreativityClub
Catch a glimpse of our recently hosted online workshops - "India's Soaring Kites," in partnership with Pratham Education that was conducted in 12 Indian regional languages across states in India! These workshops saw children create unique and artistic paper bird-kites while learning about the importance of responsible kite-flying on the occasion of Makarsankranti and Republic Day! Watch how it unfolded HERE
Saturday Art Class x Reality Gives
Our partnership with Reality Gives in training their educators in art-integrated Social-Emotional Learning has been an enlightening journey!🤗Our sessions were based on our In My Mind curriculum, which was led through a range of power-packed training sessions focused on catering to the well-being of children. Not only did these sessions greatly help our educators collectively gain the knowledge they required to become better facilitators in SEL and art instruction; but also explore tools on how they can better manage their student's well-being and create an empathetic environment within the classroom. 🌈
Saturday Art Class x Project Fuel Training
We are kickstarting the new year with a training session focused on 🌿 CULTIVATING EMPATHY IN CHILDREN 🌿 Facilitated by Deepak Ramola, Founder and Artistic Director of Project FUEL - an organization that documents and designs human wisdom collected from across the globe. Deepak also served as the Kindness Ambassador for UNESCO MGIEP. Read more about our speaker here:https://www.deepakramola.com/about The session paved the way towards gaining insightful knowledge, a peek into experiences and self-reflections for our educators. Following were 5 KEY TAKEAWAY on tools educators can use to cultivate empathy among their students: 1. Employing creative mechanisms to visualize how you feel 2.Perspective Sharing and Perspective Taking 3. Creating a space for answers that are neither right or wrong 4. Reflection 5. Involving students as collaborators and allowing their wisdom to be heard and shared See it in action HERE
Pratham Foundation Article : Creating spaces of self-expression through Social-Emotional Learning
Co-authored by Anthea Lobo (Program Associate, Saturday Art Class) This article elaborates on the importance of creativity and how spaces built on creative self-expression can help children manage their emotions, make responsible decisions and become key advocates within their own communities. --------Born free. As free as the wind blows. As free as the grass grows. Born free to follow your heart…” - Matt Monro Unfortunately, this is not our reality. Children enter educational institutions already bogged down by the weight of control and constraints. Frequent comparisons are made, children are pitted against each other so much so that their uniqueness is not recognized. Traditional assessment measures leave them with low self-esteem, anxiousness, stress, and a range of other emotions, which stifle their capabilities. What can be done to unburden them? Are there ways to help learners cope and gain a holistic educational experience?Research has shown that Social Emotional Learning (SEL) is key in supporting students to reach their full potential to succeed in the realms of school, work, and life. While SEL may be a commonly used term, what does it really signify?Read full article here:https://prathamopenschool.org/Blog/SocialEmotionalLearning
UNESCO Article : Teaching children to express, not repress in midst of a global pandemic
Authored by Anaggha Nethra (Program Associate, Saturday Art Class)This article explores how education can minimize the risk of induced anxiety among children by introducing Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), a component that helps children be more aware of how they feel, giving them a safe space to express and not repress their thoughts and emotions in the midst of a global pandemic. --------The impact of the lockdown has exposed children to a range of risks. Dr. Vibha Krishnamurthy, a developmental pediatrician has reported that there’s an increase in anxiety, depression and confusion in children because of staying cooped up at home, being unable to visit places, meet friends, play, and engage in activities that they enjoy. According to UNICEF, one-third of primary and secondary students have parents reporting that the child’s mental health has been poor since May 2020. 1098 - The child helpline witnessed 4,60,000 calls in 21 days pleading for protection - a 50% increase from their regular call volumes in 2020. These are not just data points, these are our children. ( COVID-19 and children - UNICEF DATA ). Now more than ever, it is crucial that we do whatever it takes to help our children deal with the challenges and trauma they faced and continue to face during the pandemic to preserve their overall well-being.Read full article here:https://mgiep.unesco.org/article/teaching-children-to-express-not-repress-in-midst-of-a-global-pandemic
UNESCO Article : Every child is a creative genius if we let them be one.
Authored by Dipti Balwani (Program Lead, Saturday Art Class) When ideating about designing our first-ever digital Art integrated SEL workbook, the Saturday Art Class team kept the word in mind: "Recovery". This article sheds light on 5 important levers for educators to consider whilst designing their own recovery curriculum for students to help them safely transition back to school. ------Over one year into the COVID-19 pandemic, over 800 million students still face significant disruptions in their education, ranging from full school closures in 31 countries to reduced or part-time academic schedules in another 48 countries. (UNESCO, 2021) Epidemics or pandemics, such as COVID-19, produce potential risks to child development due to the risk of illness, protective confinement, social isolation, and the increased stress level of parents and caregivers. This situation becomes an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) and may generate toxic stress, with consequent potential losses for brain development, individual and collective health, and long-term impairment of cognition, mental and physical health, and working capacity of future adults.  When ideating about designing our first ever digital Art integrated SEL workbook, the Saturday Art Class team kept the following word in mind: “Recovery”Read full article here: https://mgiep.unesco.org/article/every-child-is-a-creative-genius-if-we-let-them-be-one
Saturday Art Class x Forbes Marshall CSR Initiatives
In partnership with Forbes Marshall CSR Initiatives, Team Saturday Art Class visited the Savardari and Wasuli villages in Chakan district, Pune in the last week of October to conduct fun-filled, colorful, and eco-friendly Diwali workshops with students belonging to the villages. On DAY 1, we engaged students in meaningful discussions about the harmful effects of celebrating Diwali using firecrackers. Together, we brainstormed on steps to celebrate the festival in an eco-friendly manner leading each student to paint diyas in which they sowed seeds, labeled their diyas with their names, and made a promise to take care of their seeded diyas that would soon grow into healthy, green plants.  On DAY 2, we conducted two sessions exposing students to the art of lantern-making with a lot of inspiration gathered from famous modern artists like Akbar Padamsee and Yayoi Kusama. With the goal of giving back to nature this Diwali, students appreciated things they found beautiful in their village surroundings and incorporated them into the lanterns they created. On DAY 3, we conducted Teacher Trainings for paraeducators who work and support the children in the Savardari and Wasuli villages through non-profit organizations- Urmee and Yojak (also supported by Forbes Marshall CSR Initiatives). We kickstarted the training with a quick art activity, where teachers painted portraits of themselves inspired by modern artist Coco Davez followed by shedding light on the importance of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) and art; further encouraging teachers to create and implement their own modules based on Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) within their own classrooms.Click here to watch some beautiful moments captured during our time in the villages
Saturday Art Class x Pratham Education Foundation
In partnership with Pratham Digital, Saturday Art Class conducted 16+ workshops from 24th October 2021- 2nd November 2021, PAN India (across Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Orissa), focusing on the theme of celebrating Diwali in a happy, safe, and eco-friendly manner using the medium of art. These workshops were implemented among youth coaches (aged 15-20) and children (aged 8-14) to advocate the negative consequences of celebrating Diwali using firecrackers and instead adopting safe alternatives to celebrate Diwali using art to create colorful paper lanterns and greeting cards within their communities.These workshops were also implemented in 5 languages- English, Hindi, Marathi, Telugu, and Odia languages among community youth coaches and children.Click here to watch our workshops that were conducted LIVE on youtube
The Force For Good Program by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
Saturday Art Class is part of the J.P. Morgan Chase & Co Force For Good Program. This will help us to design and build sustainable tech solutions for the implementation of our core programs to further advance our mission. Click here to learn more about the program
Saturday Art Class x SEL Lab Training
As part of our Train-the-Trainer model that focuses on sensitizing educators in the space of Social-Emotional Learning and art, we host monthly trainings for educators focusing on various topics and themes in the realm of SEL and well-being. In November 2021, we conducted a training session for our Teach For India educators based on the theme of Emotional Awareness. The training was beautifully and interactively led by Anokhi Parikh (Co-founder of The SEL Lab) and Anum Mulla (A Writer, Editor, and Empathy and Compassion Skill Cultivation Facilitator) wherein our fellows learned about the principles of Mental States and Emotions further equipping themselves on how they can take back the theme within the classroom to cater to students emotions on a daily basis!Saturday Art Class x The SEL Lab x Anum Mulla
Saturday Art Class gets incubated by Nudge
Selected from among 580+ applications, Saturday Art Class is a part of the 8th Cohort of The/Nudge Incubator Program. This opportunity will help our organization pave the way to scaling and reach out to many more children across India. It will help us to leverage the existing ecosystem & implement solutions to creatively empower students from low-income communities across India.Click here to read more about the program
Compassion In Action - Our Community Project
As part of a community project we led on 24th December 2021, we were joined by many lovely humans who decided to express self-compassion by making a promise out of 6 promises we quoted as part of the project.1. I love you.2. I can let go.3. I can let go.4. I can do this.5. I have a voice.6. I deserve good things.These brave and amazing humans held onto their promises and will be carrying it forward with them into the new year! Watch #compassioninaction : https://www.instagram.com/saturdayartclass/p/CX_KOACo7rx/?utm_medium=copy_linkEveryone young and old participated in the activity by choosing a color corresponding to one of the six promises and imprinted their promise with a dot on a white board. The board soon filled with promises made by many people, celebrating self-compassion through lots of color and cheerfulness!Click HERE to get a glimpse into how we led #compassioninaction through Art!
Saturday Art Class begins classes for Grade 6 Teach For India students!
Our first lesson with Grade 6 students of Teach For India was based on Ellsworth Kelly's artworks. Through Ellsworth Kelly's artworks, students learned how to use a variety of emotions by understanding primary and secondary colours.As part of Session 2, students were encouraged to explore Emotional Experiences! With Mark Rothko being the artist in focus, students learnt about proportion and color by mixing colours with white and black to get lighter and darker tints & shades according to the intensity of emotions they were feeling!Click HERE to check what our little big artists created!
HundrED article: A study by Saturday Art Class on programs delivering SEL & arts-based curricula.
“To understand life is to understand ourselves, and that is both the beginning and the end of education.” - Jiddu KrishnamurtiThis wholly sums up the role of education in today’s world, affected by the pandemic and still healing from the after-effects of it. Our experience in the past year has made it clear that the role of education needs to evolve and extend beyond academics and literacy. It needs to empower children to become aware, compassionate, empathetic, and creative problem solvers. While several innovations in education can bring about this change, as an organization working with children from low-income communities in India since 2017, for Saturday Art Class, creative exploration through Social-Emotional Learning has been a highly effective tool in achieving the aforementioned outcomes in children, specifically.....Read full article here:https://hundred.org/en/articles/actionable-strategies-for-designing-innovative-and-impactful-learning-experiences#77770244
Introducing Safe Sharing Spaces in partnership with Teach For India
What is Safe Sharing Spaces by Saturday Art Class?The pandemic and the resulting lockdown, the constant media focus on the number of fatalities in the country and the world as well as the stress of ensuring safety, health and wellbeing of self and family have left children mentally and emotionally drained out. Children have been confined to indoor spaces without having an outlet or channel to express their feelings and emotions.Keeping this reality in mind, Teach for India and Saturday Art Class have come together to provide 'Safe Sharing Spaces' to children to aid in self-recovery during this time.How will children benefit?An integration of Social Emotional Learning and Art sessions to help children:Become more aware of how they feel about the current situationHave a safe space to expressHave time in the week dedicated to their well-beingDevelop a creative and artistic way of expressionGet a glimpse of Safe Sharing Spaces on Youtube!
June 2021 Update on Saturday Art Class Covid 19 Relief and Recovery Program
Saturday Art Class x Khana Chahiye
Artworks created by Little Big Artists during COVID-19
Becoming AWARE of PROBLEMS by creating art inspired by Banksy"I have drawn a bank, a man and the coronavirus. What I am trying to show here is that people are not getting a job. Even if they do have a job, they cannot go to work, because of the coronavirus, that has led to the lockdown.If we do not have a mask, we are not allowed to enter any public spaces as well. Now with the lockdown being imposed, we cannot get out from Friday 8pm to Monday 7am, the coronavirus is spreading everywhere once again." -Abdussamad Shaikh, student
Introducing our Digital Book: IN MY MIND!
Back in October 2020, we piloted our curriculum with a focus group of 220 students as part of our COVID-19 Recovery Virtual Classrooms program. Student growth was assessed and analyzed throughout the entire term of implementation. The positive results we received only further confirmed the fact that this curriculum had to be made accessible to every parent, teacher, and child globally to help them socially and emotionally during these trying times.Now digitally available on our website!What is IN MY MINDIn My Mind is a digital book based on Social-Emotional Learning, art, and creatively stimulating exercises to help provide SEL-based resources for students to educators, teachers, and parents across the globe as an open-source.This book reflects a culmination of the efforts, learnings, and feedback we were able to derive from our students and stakeholders in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that led to us curating this book that is based on our SEL and Art curriculum.What are the different components of In My Mind?In My Mind is a fine-tuned version of our curriculum that we specifically created keeping in mind the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our students. The digital book acts as a safe space for children in order to help them creatively express their emotions, thoughts, and feelings through art.How can you access In My Mind?1. Visit www.saturdayartclass.com and locate the ‘RESOURCES’ tab. 2. Each chapter of the In My Mind digital book is readily available in the PDF format, click on a session of your choice or download all 12 sessions! 3. Fill in a USER INFORMATION and SUBMIT4. Don't forget to share your reflections after each chapter by filling in the ASSESSMENT FORMCLICK HERE TO ACCESS IN MY MINDIf you are an educator / organization / school / parent open to collaborate over our digital curriculum and workbook- Get in touch- anagghan@saturdayartclass.com
Saturday Art Class Teaches Kids Social-Emotional Learning Through Art
Threadless Artist Mathiole has rightly said, ‘Art speaks where words are unable to explain’. Saturday Art Class works on the same principle: providing kids with a platform to express themselves through art’s universal language. Working primarily with children from low-income groups, the non-profit organisation was founded by Manasi Mehan and Chhavi Khandelwal with a common goal of solving a prevalent issue in the education system of most government schools―the unavailability of resources to teach kids the significance of social and emotional learning.“At the age of 20, I joined the Teach For India fellowship in 2015 as a class teacher for Grade 2 in a local government school in Mumbai. Over the course of my interactions with students, I realised that they learned academic subjects, but very little on how they could combat the pressures they faced on an everyday basis in their communities; from violence to difficult financial situations at home, poor nutrition, and for some even, child labour. The lack of expression of these issues affected their performance academically. The school lacked resources to not only provide them with a safe space to voice their feelings but also build skills like awareness, compassion and empathy so that they could uplift the current state of themselves and their communities,” shared Manasi.Chhavi Khandelwal and Manasi Mehan“I realised that maybe Art could be the medium through which I could address the lack of expression in my classroom and was on the lookout for an art teacher. I came across Chhavi (an architect by profession) who wanted to teach kids value-based art for the same reason and jumped at the opportunity of being a volunteer on Saturdays as an art teacher. Soon, our students started looking forward to Saturdays and started calling it Saturday Art Class,” she added.Ever since its inception in 2017, the NGO has come a long way. The team has worked with over 5700 students, 50 organisations and built a strong network of over 1300 volunteers. In a chat with ELLE, Manasi and Chhavi tell us all about how they are using the principles of art to bring a positive change to the lives of innocent minds and how much they’ve grown in their journey during the pandemic.Click here to read full article
Everyone's an Artist: Our first ever Digital Curriculum!
Our Social and Emotional Learning-based curriculum has been made accessible keeping in mind the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students across the country; with the lack of physical schooling and technological setbacks faced by them in terms of virtual learning, they are deprived of spaces for expression.As an organization rooted in Social and Emotional Learning through Art, we felt the need to expand our reach in order to promote well-being to more students, parents, and educators; thereby providing an open resource that is free and readily accessible, anywhere across the country!We launched our first-ever digitized curriculum called ‘Everyone’s An Artist’ in partnership with Learning Delight. This open resource is a step in making Social-Emotional Learning integrated with Art through 12 interactive session videos, accessible to over 50,000 children across the country!How can you access Everyone's an Artist? Enter your details to create an account and SIGN-IN to the application. Locate Everyone's An Artist by Saturday Art Class under the 'Life Skills' section. Search for the Learning Delight application via the Google Playstore. Start out with Session 1 and you're ready to go! Each session introduces a topic based on a specific emotion.12 SESSIONSHelp understand the topic in focus.KEYWORDSStudents learn art as they are exposed to world-famous artists in relation to the topic in session.ARTThese activities draw inspiration from the works of well-known artists across the globeACTIVITIES QUIZAt end of each session to monitor student progress.Everyone’s an Artist is one such resource that brings to light the importance of well-being & creativity in education, a tool we want as many children, teachers, and parents to benefit from.Access Everyone's An Artist on YouTube!
Updates on Saturday Art Class Covid 19 Relief and Recovery Program
We have had our hands full at Saturday Art Class ever since we launched the Saturday Art Class Covid 19 Relief and Recovery Program in April 2020, which was essentially launched as a way to combat the challenges our communities back home were facing due to the outbreak of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown imposed by the government.  The financial ramifications of the aforementioned lockdown resulted in many low-income communities without basic food supplies, as most of these depended on the daily wages to fulfil basic needs. Most of our students that we worked with, also belonged to these communities, hence it became imperative for us to take on Relief, by ensuring the supply of daily food essentials to families in need, which could help them, at least for a month. So far we have been able to help 12,000 individuals across 2500 families. Coupling this, we also launched Recovery, as a way to help children deal with their feelings in a positive way during this difficult time, where normalcy has been lost and has been replaced by constant stress on the effects of the disease and the pandemic. The Recovery program was basically designed to find a solution to our volunteers not being able to go on ground and conduct Social Emotional Learning and Art sessions with our children, since schools remain shut in India. Three months ago, we launched phase 1 of our "Virtual Classes for Recovery Program" where our facilitators hosted sessions for children over zoom calls. However, while phase 1 was largely successful, with more than 85% attendance being recorded, we realised that digital learning further created a gap in an already divided education system by the use of technology. The communities we worked with do not have access to technology compatible with digital learning nor do they have the resources to invest in a relatively expensive device, especially when they are currently just surviving. Additionally, over the course of the lockdown, studies show how children exposed to excess screen time as a result of schools shifting onto a digital platform, has done more harm than good. Keeping these setbacks in mind, we decided to launch our Phase 2 of the program by being mindful of what our children and communities really needed without creating a new demand. We compiled all our 12 lesson plans for Phase 2 into a workbook called, In My Mind, printed and distributed it to all children who are a part of the current phase along with Art Kits. Although we will continue to have classes over a digital platform, the larger idea behind this was to equip a child with simple tools to help him at home, with minimal tech intervention. For example, if a child cannot come online due to technical setbacks, with the aid of the workbook and art kit, our facilitators can ensure learning reaches a child over a 10 min phone call rather than a 90 min virtual class over zoom. We are also launching an e-version of the In My Mind workbook as an open source to help parents, teachers and children across the world with social emotional learning and art tools. "I believe it is a helpful resource which can help children get through the current circumstances that has jolted the world into a halting stop." -Chhavi Khandelwal, Co-founder 
Saturday Art Class RELIEF & RECOVERY fundraiser
Saturday Art Class has launched a RELIEF & RECOVERY FUNDRAISER where we are raising funds to help communities in need by providing them RELIEF through daily food supplies and RECOVERY through designing, developing and implementing a recovery based social and emotional well being based art curriculum. 
Saturday Art Class Champion Project
The Saturday Art Class Champion project is a project started to enable individuals supporting Saturday Art Class’ Relief and Recovery efforts by raising funds individually through crowdfunding platforms. Here is what some of the champions had to say:“Being a Saturday Art Class Champion has empowered and enabled me to contribute to the communities in need during the pandemic” - Adwait Khandelwal, student “The lockdown made me realise that while my family is fortunate enough to have facilities & resources to help us through the lockdown, the majority of people in low-income communities do not have enough to put meals on the table.” - Zoish Contractor, architectAs of 15th May 2020, we have 8 champions who are raising funds for RELIEF & RECOVERY efforts of Saturday Art Class 
Saturday Art Class Relief Efforts during Covid 19 Pandemic
Saturday Art Class has launched a RELIEF & RECOVERY FUNDRAISER where we are raising funds to help communities in need by providing them RELIEF through daily food supplies and RECOVERY through designing, developing and implementing a recovery based social and emotional well being based art curriculum. Saturday Art Class partnered with NGO Bright Future India to generate funds and provide relief in the form of food essentials within the Saturday Art Class community network. We would also like to extend our gratitude to our Saturday Art Class champion, Adwait Khandelwal who initiated a crowdfunding campaign to raise INR 1,00,000 and successfully helped us reach 100 families. As of 11/05/2020, we have provided Relief to 203 families and 1196 individuals. 
Serendipity Circle with Saturday Art Class Coaches
Serendipity Circle One of our Saturday Art Class Coaches conducted Serendipity circles with the entire team. The idea of Serendipity circles was inspired by New York Times Bestseller,”Chew on life’s Big Questions”. These circles are a space where magic is brewed with 3 secret ingredients, Humans, their minds and serendipitous conversations. All you need for this circle is a group of people who are willing to speak their mind and figure out this journey of being human and getting by together. We have so far conducted three sessions each conducted by different coaches from the team.These circles have focussed on our mental well being, body thoughts and how we can be positive during this entire pandemic.These circles are a safe space to let your thoughts out and deal with the negativity around. Get your close friends together and try this out as it really brings inner peace.
Saturday Art Class Recovery Plan during Covid 19 Pandemic
Having worked with over 5500 children in the past 3 years, we, at Saturday Art Class understand where they come from, their familial backgrounds and the environments in which they live. Thus, we have decided to use our understanding, reach and network to help this sector of society/ our students and their communities with Relief through essentials for their daily survival. Additionally, while our first priority will be to cater to the essentials such as food supplies, our efforts will go beyond this, to work on Recovery by designing and implementing a Social Emotional Well-being curriculum for children as well as adultsAs an organisation whose roots are in Social Emotional Learning, we want our impact to go beyond just Relief. We want to work on Recovery through designing, developing and conducting well being based curriculum to help communities out of the sustained trauma caused by the constant negativity and loss of jobs, lack of income, domestic abuse and violence, lack of daily essentials such as food etc caused during the pandemic.Why is Recovery crucial?The ambiguity of the situation : Given that the number of people infected by the virus is increasing exponentially, it is hard to imagine a life without lockdown. It has become a permanent cause of worry especially considering the fact that work has stopped for many people. This constant state of stress calls for each one of us to look within for mental care Lack of Safe Space to Express : Children are physically confined in small spaces for extended periods. In addition, they are witnessing & dealing with hardships. It is understandable that these may cause behavioural issues as a result of not being able to express freely and safely resulting in the inability to fulfill their social-emotional needs.Regular school time table has been disrupted : Schools are shut indefinitely. Given that there is a dearth of basic necessities in low income communities, education currently is a low priority. Children are unable to learn lessons at home due to these issues coupled with lack of technological aid and internet bandwidth issues. What RECOVERY work have we done already ?The global pandemic and the consequential lockdown, made us realise the importance of taking steps towards helping the emotional well-being of children and adults. We have already set in motion certain partnerships and collaborations as a step to make way for a larger idea that could potentially enable us to impact lives at scale. Kshmata x Saturday Art Class : We collaborated with Kshmata, an NGO that works to reintegrate exploited survivors as dignified, positive and productive participants of the society, to conduct virtual classes with teenage girls in one of their centres. The lessons were conducted by trained Saturday Art Class Coaches (our part time teachers) and were based on social emotional learning through ART. The approach adopted by our coaches for these virtual lessons was to build a rapport with the girls in the first few virtual sessions and then build on that to provide them with a safe space to express their feelings related to various circumstances through different simulations. 
Striving towards Relief and Recovery Efforts during COVID 19 Pandemic
Martin Luther King Jr once said, “Life’s most urgent question is - What are you doing for others ?” We, at Saturday Art Class couldn’t help but relate to this question now more than ever and felt an urge to respond to the critical needs thus risen."Sometimes people come and distribute food. I have no idea who they are, but it's very little. We only get to eat once in two-three days." - A Saturday Art Class student “India's poorest 'fear hunger may kill us before coronavirus" - BBC News "I earn 600 rupees every day and I have five people to feed. We will run out of food in a few days. I know the risk of coronavirus, but I can't see my children hungry," - A daily wage earner.The Covid-19 pandemic has not only affected health but also financially handicapped and restrained millions of individuals in India as a result of the lockdown. The financial ramifications have left communities with very little to survive on in terms of basic essentials. Additionally, given the current situation of the world, schools remain shut indefinitely and education may see a paradigm shift over the next few months.Having worked with over 5500 children in the past 3 years, we, at Saturday Art Class understand where they come from, their familial backgrounds and the environments in which they live. Thus, we have decided to use our understanding, reach and network to help this sector of society/ our students and their communities with Relief through essentials for their daily survival. Additionally, while our first priority will be to cater to the essentials such as food supplies, our efforts will go beyond this, to work on Recovery by designing and implementing a Social Emotional Well-being curriculum for children as well as adults
Saturday Art Class: Social emotional learning through art
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Saturday Art Class: Meet the co-founder - Manasi Mehan
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Saturday Art Class: Meet the co-founder - Chhavi Khandelwal
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Saturday Art Class Student, facilitates a workshop on Self Awareness+ Management through ART!
As part of inculcating leadership in the Grades 6 cohort of Saturday Art Class students, we started training students to enable them to become facilitators in and outside the classroom. At first, these trainings looked more at building leadership skills such as public speaking, enunciation, facilitation etc. Eventually this led to children leading art workshops for adults as part of corporate employee engagements at establishments like SOHO House in Mumbai and Agrocel Pvt Ltd.Our student leaders conducted workshops with the focus on Social Emotional Learning and art inspired by Artists like Yayoi Kusama and Coco Davez for adults.Inspired by the art of Yayoi Kusama and infinity nets, our students facilitated a session on self awareness and self management experiences based on their reflections and learnings from how they have behaved in the past and connected it to Kusama’s meditation practice of infinity netsAnother session on Coco Davez’s self portraits were facilitated keeping in mind the relationship building and self awareness aspect resulting in teaching adults Davez’s style of Self Portraits with the message of self love.We shot a small video of our children facilitating a workshop at Soho House, Mumbai. You can click here to watch the video!
Exhibition 3.0
Exhibition 3.0 held on 7th April 2019 at Jamnabai Narsee School, Mumbai, India displayed the artwork made by the students of Saturday ArtClass throughout the Academic Year 2018-19. The exhibition enabled Saturday Art Class to provide a view of yearlong proceedings to our stakeholders and at the same time, form new partnerships. The Exhibition was inaugurated by Ms.Bhagyashree Dassani and Mr.Abhimanyu Dassani. Advancing from last year, the exhibition received a footfall of 2500+ visitors which included Saturday Art Class students, teachers & Headmasters, parents, mentors, parents & student s of Jamnabai Narsee School and our well-wishers. The exhibition was visited by 750 Saturday Art Class students from 9 partner schools for whom transportation and food had been arranged for by Saturday Art Class.You can click here to watch a video shot during the Exhibition 3.0
Exhibition 2.0
The second rendition was held on 15th April, 2019 at Jamnabai Narsee School in Mumbai, India where the 1200+ students of Saturday Art Class and their parents witnessed the year-long effort and dedication as evident from the displayed art-works. The exhibition was also open to the many stakeholders of Saturday Art Class. The presented artwork along with interactive installations and workshops made the exhibition a successYou can click on this link to watch a video shot during the Exhibition 2.0
Exhibition 1.0
The first rendition of the exhibition took place at Shankarwadi Mumbai Public School, Jogeshwari, Mumbai, for the academic year 2016-17. With all enthusiasm and pride, the students of grade-3 hosted the exhibition and showcased their creativity. The proceeds out of the exhibition were then used to cater to the children’s needs.You can click here to watch a short film showcasing the Saturday Art Class Exhibition 1.0
Saturday Art Class
The Saturday Art Class Exhibition is an End of Year Annual Event that showcases the artwork made by students throughout the trimesters. The plat form provided engages parents, teachers, funders, well -wishers and the other stakeholders, allowing children to not only showcase their creativity but gain a sense of achievement. The year-long commitment is realised as a potential to future-growth and that of the current term. The external audience is made aware of this commitment and through the event, we hope to motivate them to help our cause and also encourage new partnerships and donations.The exhibitions contain several different aspects such as the display of artworks done by the children from partner institutions, workshops based on lesson plans conducted in class and interactive installations which are created by the children themselves. We had our first rendition of the exhibition in 2017 and consecutively we have had one in each year, in 2018 and in 2019. The 2020 exhibition was stalled due to the Covid 19 Pandemic Lockdown
Sarmaya x Saturday Art Class: Using Tholu Bommalaata puppets to talk about gender equality
My organisation, Saturday Art Class collaborated with Sarmaya Arts Foundation to design three different lesson plans based on art practices traditional to Indian arts and culture context.The Sarmaya Arts Foundation is a digital museum with an archive in Mumbai, which houses a rich collection of coins, etchings, engravings, maps, photography, rare books, folk and tribal and modern and contemporary art. Their goal is to encourage young people to be excited about art, history and heritage,and to make the collections as accessible as possible to like minded enthusiasts. Apart from an active engagement on social media and on the Sarmaya website, their outreach consists of exhibitions, art education programs, pop ups, talks and travel.“Tholu Bommalata,” is a style of shadow puppetry originated from Andhra Pradesh, India. It is a traditional folk art where puppets are crafted and performances through them usually revolve around stories from around the villages and mythology. At Saturday Art Class, we used puppetry as a way to incorporate gender sensitivity amongst the children such that boys were given a female puppet stencil while girls were given male puppet stencil. They had to colour and design their own puppets and ultimately perform a skit for the classroom, keeping the gender of their puppets in mind. We filmed the process and you could watch it in the link provided here!Since the topics touched, through our collaboration were sensitive topics to teach children, we held multiple training sessions for our teachers to ensure high quality being delivered in the classroom. 
Help One, Help All! - A Saturday Art Class Classroom Lesson Plan
Saturday Art Class collaborated with Sarmaya Arts Foundation to design three different lesson plans based on art practices traditional to Indian arts and culture context.Our second plan designed through this collaboration was called - "Help one, Help all" which also included "Gond painting,” a form of tribal and folk art practice originated in Madhya Pradesh, India was taught to children through this collaboration. It not only helped children gain an insight on different community based practices in India but the lesson plan activity was also designed such that it aligned to our social emotional learning outcome of building healthy relationships within communities. Children first performed a short skit based on a story on friendship and later, through those learnings, worked in groups on common art sheets to understand the experience of sharing and co-creation. This lesson plan is a classic example of how we use art as a way to drive social emotional based learnings in the classroom. 
I AM A SUPERSTAR!
Saturday Art Class collaborated with Sarmaya Arts Foundation to design three different lesson plans based on art practices traditional to Indian arts and culture context. These lesson plans were implemented in all our partner schools for over 1000 children The Sarmaya Arts Foundation is a digital museum with an archive in Mumbai, which houses a rich collection of coins, etchings, engravings, maps, photography, rare books, folk and tribal and modern and contemporary art“Painted photographs” was one of the modules thus developed. This art practice dates back to the 19th century where people would commission artists to paint over their black and white photographs and add aspirational details like jewellery, artefacts among other items by painting over their black and white portraits. At Saturday Art Class we used this practice to help our students envision what they wanted to achieve in their future, hence building on a growth mindset. Children were given their individual black and white photographed portraits, which they had to paint over to represent what they wished to achieve for themselves when they grow up. This lesson plan was a part of a series of 2 lesson plans where the main focus was to build confidence in children through positive reinforcement as well as interaction around themes that related to their skills, their likes and their role models.
Children From Low-Income Families Are Learning About Life Values Through Art, Thanks To Saturday Art Class
To read the article published by Logical Indian click on the link below : https://thelogicalindian.com/my-social-responsibility/saturday-art-class/
Watch: The Saturday art class that's drawing kids to school - Firstpost
The renowned media publication, First Post, covered the work of Saturday Art Class in schools. To see the video, click on the link below : https://www.firstpost.com/living/watch-the-saturday-art-class-thats-drawing-kids-to-school-4328699.html
Cultivating Minds Through Art | Chhavi Khandelwal and Manasi Mehan | TEDxISME
Co-founders of Saturday Art Class, Chhavi Khandelwal and Manasi Mehan gave a TEDx talk at ISME School of Management and Entrepreneurship on the idea behind the inception of Saturday Art Class and why it is important for the youth to contribute to the community.To see the talk, click on the link : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v25in0dxe44&feature=youtu.be
Art for learning and healing
We were humbled to be featured in one of the leading national news publications in India, The Hindu, through an article written by Ms Varda Sharma. You can read the article here
International Youth Day 2019: Meet the young leaders transforming education
As part of the International Youth Day celebrations, the Queen's Commonwealth Trust featured the founders of Saturday Art Class. Read the article here
Arts for Good Fellowship 2020 - Arts for Good Fellowship 2020
Our co founder Chhavi Khandelwal represented Saturday Art Class as a Fellow of Singapore International Arts for Good FellowshipThe 2019-2020 cohort of fellows interacted over two exchanges, one in Singapore and the other one in Delhi, to build learnings and best practices around creatively empowering the youth and the children through art.
Gratitude Network Announces 30 Fellows For 2020 Cohort Of Changemakers For Children
Our co-founder Manasi Mehan has been selected as a Gratitude Network Fellow in the 2020 cohort of change makers who are working to support children and youth around the globe.Manasi and Saturday Art Class have been chosen from more than 1200 applicants across the world into a cohort of 30 top social entrepreneurs.We are so excited to be a part of this esteemed group of individuals who share similar goals. The synergies we create through this global network will help us increase our impact manifold!Thank you Forbes , The Gratitude Network Devin Thorpe for this feature 🌟
Building Trust in the classrooms
Trusting one another is the key to building a healthy relationship. We taught our students the Act of Trust and Friendship!
Saturday Art Class at Good Pitch India Panel
Our co-founder Chhavi Khandelwal recently represented Saturday Art Class at Good Pitch India panel for the film Dharavi This film addresses an important aspect of our upbringing, education and perception. It speaks about the need of an artist to simply express through his art and his rejection of making it commercial. It talks about the importance of Thriving VS Surviving, something that we as an organisation is also trying to do!

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