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
- 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.
- These children often experience low levels of confidence, struggle with communication, building and maintaining healthy relationships & collectively problem-solving.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- We partner with education organizations to train and build capacity in their educators in visual arts, social-emotional skills integrated learning.
- Our trainings enable educators to make their classrooms safe as well as develop skills and mindsets to design creative processes.
- 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)
- 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:
- Employing creative mechanisms to visualize how you feel
- Perspective Sharing and Perspective Taking
- Creating a space for answers that are neither right nor wrong
- Reflection
- Involving students as collaborators and allowing their wisdom to be heard and share.
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
- Pratham Education Foundation
- The Nudge Centre for Social Innovation
- Forbes Marshall CSR Initiatives
- Teach For India
- Reality Gives
- ATMA- An accelerator for education
- The Gratitude Network
- Miller Centre for social entrepreneurship
- Santa Clara University
- Arts for Good fellowship
- Learning Delight
- Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai
- Sarmaya
- Addidas
- Udaan
- Piramal Art Foundation
- Jamnabai Narsee School
- Delhi Art Gallery
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
- Teaching children to express, not repress in midst of a global pandemic - Authored by Anaggha Nethra (Program Associate, Saturday Art Class)
- Every child is a creative genius if we let them be one- Authored Dipti Balwani (Program Lead, Saturday Art Class)
- Creating spaces of self-expression through Social Emotional Learning- Co-authored by Anthea Lobo (Program Associate, Saturday Art Class)
- ELLE India - Saturday Art Class Teaches Kids Social-Emotional Learning Through Art
- TedxISME - Cultivating Minds Through Art
- TedXYouth @NMS - Relief and Recovery during COVID-19
- Forbes - Gratitude Network Announces 30 Fellows For 2020 Cohort Of Changemakers For Children
- FirstPost - Watch: The Saturday art class that's drawing kids to school
- Queens Commonwealth Trust - Saturday Art Class: Social-emotional learning through art
- The Hindu - Art for Learning and Healing
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
- Implement the Train-the-Trainer model with an aim to train 300+ educators from a minimum of 5 education partner organizations across India.
- Streamlining our Monitoring and Evaluation methods to achieve valid and accurate data to determine the impact created on the ground.
- Building partnerships with large-scale organizations to reach more children and scale impact.
- 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
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:
- Exhibtion 1.0 (2017)
- Exhibtion 2.0 (2018)
- Exibition 3.0 (2019)
*Exhibition 4.0 could not be executed due to the COVID-19 pandemic
