Creativity Adda Newsletter March 2021

Manish Jain

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8 min readMay 22, 2021

“Unschooling in a Government School”

In March Flowers bloom and so does hope.

With march begins the festival of colors. It is the dawn when everything wakes up from the cold-lazy night, stretching its limbs, getting ready for the new beginning. Nature prepares itself for the hot-productive months of the year. It is the time when warm sunbeams fill us with energy and enthusiasm. It’s a head start for us at Creativity Adda to gear up for the challenges this unpredictable time has to offer. The scent of hope is filled in the spring air.

Community Media Academy

FILMMAKING SESSIONS WITH PROFESSIONAL FILMMAKER NITIN DAS

Our media team organized an online session with well-known documentary filmmaker Nitin Das of Filmkaar. In the session, students were asked to share their work and express areas they want to improve. Nitin Bhai gave an assignment to create and share a story with 5 photos, keeping in mind: 1) Hero, 2) Villain, 3) Action, 4) Emotion, 5) Ending. Jatin and Satyam made their stories keeping all the 5 elements. It was a great learning experience for them.

BEGINNING FILMMAKING WORKSHOP

Guest resource person, Eshaan from FilmArt, led a filmmaking workshop with new students. He shared: how to shoot a film, types of films, types of shoots, how to interview, basics of editing. The team shot two short films. Mohit (8th class) and Jitender (7th class) helped the facilitators to manage the equipment and the team. Both of them are playing a major role in editing the film.

EDITING WORKSHOP WITH SONU ARYA

In the community media lab, new students had an advance editing workshop with Sonu Arya from Gang7. They learned some good tips on editing such as how to make a proper frame, the importance of the size and the font of the text, etc. Rohit (10th class) found it really helpful, as he was lacking these skills while editing videos. Rohit later shot and edited a film this month— A Day with Gandhiji — in the media hub, during the visit to National Gandhi Museum.

Design Studio and Maker Space

REPAIR CAFE VISITS LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD

This month we did various sessions regarding electrical repairing and learned the basic concepts of electricity. We learned to identify the power, the neutral wire, and to fix old electrical boards. We later gave students the challenge to assemble and do wiring for a brand new electrical board.

As part of the Community Repair Cafe, facilitators Maheep and Vijay took Makerspace students into the community to fix the electric switchboards in students’ houses. Parents were proud to see their children do something meaningful on their own.

NEW PRODUCTS FOR SALE

Makerspace team Krishna (7th class), Abhishek (class 7th), and Adarsh (8th class) continued their exploration of carpentry and designed a wooden guitar stand that is available for sale at 350 rupees. The team also made bookshelves, lampshades and multipurpose storage stands.

Slowfood Junior Chefs Academy

MEXICAN AND ITALIAN FOOD WEEKS

Our Slow Food junior chefs tried their hands at fresh Mexican rice, nachos, burritos, tacos, and churros. It was a true delight and everyone loved it. We are pretty sure we are going to cook all that soon again.

Our junior chefs also made excellent pizza, pasta, bruschetta, and lasagna.

BAKING WEEK

The junior chefs also explored baking this month with marble cake, raagi-chocolate cake, raagi chocolate cookies, and multigrain bread.

FOOD STALL IN COMMUNITY

As a social interactive event, the junior chefs organized a food stall in their local community and served sandwiches to families and friends. They managed it all so well, we were proud and overwhelmed by the positive response at the same time.

SPECIAL WORKSHOP BY PARENT

Our student Bhuri’s mother, Nazira Ji came to the Adda and shared her recipe ‘Bottle Gourd (Lauki) Kheer’. The junior chefs asked her a lot of questions about her culinary experiences. She said that the lauki is ready when it turns golden and it is very important to roast it well for the kheer to have a desired crispy texture. We explored how we could innovate. Sunil (7th class) shared an idea that we could add dry fruits to this kheer. Krishna(9th class) shared his idea that we could add a pinch of turmeric for the color! Nazira Ji mentioned that adding turmeric will overpower the taste of the kheer. Faizal asked whether we can make ‘gajar ka kheer’ with the same process of ‘lauki ka kheer’. We asked Faizal to do this experiment at home and share the results with us.

Junior chefs Krishna (9th class) and Rahul (8th class) tried ‘Lauki ki kheer’ at home after they learned it at the Adda. Krishna, told us that there was no desi ghee at his house so he used butter as a substitute, and adding butter did not change the taste of the kheer. They also made potato pappad with their mothers and sent us some. They are now confident enough to keep experimenting on their own at home.

Dance Hub

FLASH MOB AT CNG PARK, GOPALPUR

Our dance team performed a flash mob for residents of Gopalpur. The theme of the skit was not to force and pressure kids to do something for the sake of showing off in society or some rat race. It didn’t go exactly the way we wanted it to be with some issues of sound, but now we are determined enough to make it loud and successful next time.

BREAK DANCING WORKSHOPS WITH QUEST-THE HIP HOP SKOOL

Suraj Vohra and Yasum Takam, senior faculty of Quest-The Hip Hop Skool held a five-day breaking camp with Creativity Adda. The motto of this camp was to introduce a new dance style within the breakdance genre.

Along with different forms and techniques, we also learned that dance is all about expressing your emotions using your body, having fun, gaining strength in your muscles, and developing a balance not only for dance moves but for the inner self. Salsa, back step, cross-back step, apache storm, shuffle, backflip, summer sort, air flare, knee drop, P, 360 spin, jump and hook, baby freeze, handstand, headstand & master swipe were some of the dance forms performed and practiced by our troop.

Our senior dance team choreographed a new dance on a song called Satya for the March dance highlight.

Music Hub

We took our music group to the Tagore Garden’s music studio. Later, one of our students, Mange Ram sang a classical folk song and everyone there loved his exceptional talent.

The team learned the song Chaudhary and performed it very well. They learned a lot about folk music of India after listening to such a mesmerizing song and realized that indigenous music is getting lost and it is high time to revive it. They also performed their first Punjabi language song called JugniJi and learned to play it on Casio as well.

Our former Dariya Ganj Adda student, Labansh, hosted a Djembe and Percussion workshop with the students where he introduced them to his passion for drumming.

Sports and Fitness Hub

The members of our sports hub spent time deepening their skating skills and learning new tricks and techniques. This month, they practiced advanced skating techniques including one-leg skating, camel spin, etc. They developed a new dance skating routine to perform at Dariya Dil Cafe.

Special Events

DARIYA DIL CAFE IS BACK

Our first cafe of this month was on 6th March. Dariya Dil Cafe was a hit. We had a blast with our games and ice-breaking activities with families and friends.

We celebrated Holi Special Dariya Dil Café on 25th March. There were around 100 people including parents, friends, and students. Our cooking team managed the hospitality of Dariya Dil Café. We divided ourselves into four teams. Faizal (7th class, leading the first team) took the responsibility for making the tea, Gulshan (9th class, leading the second team) took the responsibility of making raagi mix veg pakkode, and Deepak (6th class, leading the third team) took the responsibility of making gunjiya. Aakash and Dimanshu took the lead of the fourth team and were responsible for cleanliness. The junior hefs played a good role in serving and making food for everyone who visited our café. The music and the dance team performed as well. Later, the skating group also came with their performance and amazed everyone with it. The makerspace team took the responsibility of decoration. Our students also conducted a special natural Holi color session for the parents and friends (which he learned a few days before).

URBAN FARMING WORKSHOP

We hosted an Urban Farming workshop with guest permaculture farming resource person and an alumnus of the Adda, Sakib. We used plastic crates for growing tomatoes, bitter gourd, sweet corn, and laal saag.

NATURAL HOLI COLOUR MAKING WORKSHOP

Sakib hosted a workshop where we made natural colors for the Holi festival. We made colors using natural dyes such as indigo, turmeric, spinach, beetroot juice, and arrowroot powder as the base.