Art for Everyone was an event organised by three of my friends, wherein they aimed to promote visual arts in a rural area. They used government school of that area as their platform to connect to underprivileged children and conduct their event. The event was divided into two days, 25th August and 22nd September. On 25th August, these children were made to explore visual arts, wherein we taught them simple drawings, and how to use different mediums of colours. All the resources that we carried with us for the event were donated by students of our school (including us). On 22nd September, we conducted a friendly drawing competition in the government school for those students to display their learnings and talent. I, fortunately, was a part of such an event as a volunteer.

LO2, LO5:

We aimed to conduct this event for students of grades 5-8. However, as we reached the venue, we got to know that even grade 1 and grade 2 students would be a part of the event. At first, we panicked, as we had limited resources, and we were unsure if we could manage so many students. However, we took this up as a challenge and segregated students as per their grades and we (volunteers) assigned ourselves one grade each. In this way, we could make sure the event was running smoothly and would call other volunteers if any help was required. Later, I instructed all the students about their agendas.

There were several last-minute crises too. As we had more students than we expected, we fell short of some resources. The school helped us with some resources such as extra papers, pencils and erasers, but crayons, watercolours and poster colours were still limited. So, we had to make students sit in larger groups (we originally decided to make 4-5 students share one box of paints, but later we had to make 7-8 students share one box of paints). Naturally, this consumed more time to conclude the event. We all were doubtful if we would be allowed to consume more time, but the teachers there were very cooperative and were ready to give us more time for a good cause.

LO 6:

Art for everyone made all of us realise that we should be thankful for being able to afford all these resources so easily. We don’t even think twice before buying new resources, without knowing that we already have plenty of them. We saw how so many people do not even have simple resources. We saw how they had never even explored poster colours before in their life, which I think is a major cause of some of their talents being suppressed. Donating our ‘extra’ resources to them also is going to help them and get their talents out! This gave me a great feeling of pride and satisfaction that we could do something for those little children.

Conclusion:

This event has taught me a lot, now when I go shopping, I actually think twice before buying anything. I make myself sure first that I don’t have that particular thing and I whether I really need it or not. I will always look forward to being a part of such positive and eye-opening events!