Bornfree Art School International
The Times of India recently reported on a school in Bangalore that's exclusively for street, working, and freed bonded labor children. Bornfree Art School International (BASI) has an objective to educate and develop children through the arts.
From the Times article:
A childhood lost and a childhood regained. It's a transformation that very few of the country's 12.7 million child workers can make. But in Bangalore's Born Free Art School, art is making that leap of faith possible. Seventeen-year-old Raja was a ragpicker before he began giving shape to stone. Not one for drawing before he starts pounding, Raja says the picture's clear in his mind's eye. "Art needs discipline and concentration. For instance, a sculptor has to beat a stone 30,000 times before it takes shape. Many streetkids come here with a drug habit but it's art that weans them away," says John Devaraj, a sculptor who has founded this school.
The children come from across the country, some bonded labourers rescued by NGOs like Childline and sent to Bornfree, some drawn by the school's brightly painted sunflower van that's a familiar sight on city streets and others just following the footsteps of their friends who have given up a life of labour for a life of learning.
From BASI's website:
The BASI through artistic learning will teach sculpture, painting, dance, music, theater, photography and filmmaking along with reading, writing, and mathematics. The BASI is conceived as a one-year study course to begin with. We take a tangible and tactile methodology in teaching that is by the pictorial sense, which has been an important method of education along with our flourishing oral traditions of learning. Study through entertainment and sharing knowledge will be the dynamic process of learning. Art is a means for children from such difficult backgrounds to generate interest in education and get them back to the mainstream of the society. When the student is ready for artistic expressions to turn to become a professional s/he will be taken to a higher level of study, either in the BASI or placed in a specialized education institute.
Not an NGO, but a People's Movement. Bornfree Art School is not the establishment of another school, but a movement for the liberation of toiling children. This movement has to involve the people and they have to continue this endeavor. The establishment of BASIs has to expand especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America wherever child labour exists.
We at MOTIVE applaud John Devaraj's efforts and his creation of the Bornfree Art School International - it's yet another way that art can be used a means to aid and educate the world.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and further insight into BASI and other efforts like it. Please discuss this article in our forum here: http://www.motive-art.org/forum/showthread.php?t=15
