In December, 2018, Prayasam- an NGO based in Kolkata invited us to conduct a two day workshop on art and poetry primarily focusing on bringing up various social and emotional issues amongst the underprivileged teenagers and young adults they work with. This gave us a unique opportunity to expand our work as we delved into exploring emotions through art forms.
Day 1: We started off with playing a music piece for them, after which the participants were each asked to talk about the emotions the music evoked. They talked about their dreams and goals in life. It was followed by ‘mind-mapping’ in which the participants connected various landscapes with various emotions, states of mind. They identified the positive and negative among these, thought about their personal memories related to such feelings- after which they expressed these emotions through colours and paintings.
Day 2: As a continuation from the first day, each participant created something that portrayed a transformation from negative to positive feelings for each of them. Whatever they had created on the first day, along with the poetry or performance was now actually curated into an entire performance where everyone participated and everyone’s work could be showcased. In fusing music, art, dance, acting and written words, their performance told each of their stories- the stories they wanted to share with everyone.