Shiv Kumar, an artist who attended a comic workshop by WCI years ago found the idea of comics in education interesting and started conducting workshops at various schools with teachers in Karnataka recently, proving that the art of creating comics, once learnt, never goes in vain.
When we entered the classroom at MCD Primary School, Turkman Road in Delhi, on the first day of a three day workshop, the students looked scared yet excited to know what was about to happen. As the workshop progressed, the kids started to lose their inhibition and began sharing their own stories on the topic of food, nutrition and hygiene. They later created comics based on these stories. At the end of the workshop, all students had a comic to show, which they were extremely proud of!
There is a small village called Janwar in the middle of a forest in Panna district of Madhya Pradesh. You will be surprised to know that there is a world level skateboard park in this village! World Comics India conducted a workshop in collaboration with Janwar Castle for the students of Primary and Middle school in the village, where the students created comics on the issues that they face in their day-to-day life. These comics were also exhibited at other schools and later in Delhi and Meerut as well.
Students of English Journalism at Indian Institute of Mass Communication attended workshop on Comic Journalism. Mr. Sharad Sharma & Dr. Anubhuti Yadav, Course Director, facilitated the workshop.
Our workshop at Hansraj College, Delhi was short but no less on energy or enthusiasm. After a few drawing exercises, everybody, including all teachers and students wrote, shared and discussed their own personal stories and experiences that they would later want to make into a comic. Various different stories emerged, like the story about a boy who decided to stand up against a man who broke the queue at the metro station, the story of a Godman whose remedy to poverty was itself so expensive that no poor man could afford it, and the story about a boy’s cook who took care of him like his own mother. After a long, intense discussion on every story, the students started working on creating visual frames for these stories.
The workshop was organized in collaboration with The Igniters in association with Kalakriti- The fine arts society, Hansraj College.
A Grassroots Comics workshop was conducted with the students of Vocational Training at Ambedkar University as part of their orientation programme where around 80 students created their own comics!
