The Colours of Creativity Adda
by Vibhuti
Last year in April, when I first went to Creativity Adda for a Dariya Dil Cafe, I was overwhelmed with the warm feeling there. I indulged myself in amazing ragi puris with aloo sabzi and a healthy ragi cake made by the kids, all by themselves. There was lots of singing and dancing and the entire space was decorated with up-cycled decorations by the kids. It did some magic to me and I wanted to keep going back there. But I wasn’t able to put my finger to what exactly did the magic for me.
Almost after a year when I got a chance to go back there for a clowning workshop, I was very excited. Initially, it was only about learning and doing clowning. From whatever I knew about the Creativity Adda, I was also a bit anxious about learning with children, especially mostly boys who were half my age.
From the first moment when I entered there, all my inhibitions dissolved. The space was very inviting with colourful doodles all over the walls. There was lots of open space for everyone to just play/jam or just be. As I went there, day after day, for a week altogether, I felt liberated to be at a place like that.
After a suffocating experience of my own education and a disappointing wandering to other educational institutions around India in search of a revolutionary learning setup, this felt right for various reasons. My time at Adda slowly made me realise what did the magic for me.
At Adda, everyone is a teacher and a learner. Unlike conventional learning institutes who hire “adult teachers” based on their degrees, Adda encourages everyone to share their skills and passions with others while learning whatever they feel like. After our second day of the clowning workshop, Sukhani, our clowning facilitator, showed interest in putting on roller skates and learn. A kid of about 14 years ran to fetch his skates and gave instructions on how to wear them. He then held her hands tightly and made her walk with the skates on. Their skating facilitator was somewhere else with other kids.
On another occasion, when I picked up the Djembe, a vocals and guitar learner-teacher, gave me my first lesson in beats. Karan, a bright young chap was teaching dance to the other children and also learning vocals from Vikram.
A frustration I carried from my schooling experience was that we were expected to be already skilled at singing and dancing or doing theatre and only the skilled kids could participate in performing at various occasions. Others were never encouraged to try these various activities and discover was makes them come alive. I think my interest to try out theatre/clowning was also because as a child I never could get a chance to try out theatre.
But here at Adda, you can try everything that happens there and decide for yourself what is it that one would like to dive deeper into. All activities happen almost parallel, and everyone is invited to have a taste of it. Once you feel this is meant for you, you commit to attending the workshops regularly, with your own discipline. Nobody labels you or expects you to be at their workshops. All the facilitators and students operate with the value, whosoever is present are the right people to focus on. During my 5 days there, I myself tried playing football, badminton, skating, the Djambe, vocals, clowning and understanding rhythms and beats.
In the Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning, producing or creating something new is the highest level of learning. When students reach that level in any course, field, etc., the educators’ role is then to only overlook that process of self-learning and self-discovering. While in my education, there was zero attempt to produce such experiences and we also lacked skills to reach there. The various holiday projects given maybe to facilitate this process were only reduced to copy-paste from google.
My assumption of difficulty of creating this in a structural learning environment flew out of the window, when I heard songs written and composed by children. The graphic designers were making websites for their fathers’ businesses, designing visiting cards for friends and family members. The little chefs were inventing new recipes using ingredients locally available. The dancers choreographing old and new songs all by themselves.
Creativity is overflowing there and everyone seems to find their own perfect environment and support to create, reinvent and produce original pieces of self expression. And, hence the role of a facilitator here, is only limited to guiding the learners to various resources and exploring with them.
The usual notion that the teacher will be an adult, learning will happen within same age group of people, classes will be conducted in jail-like classrooms, course delivered from age-old textbooks, etc., are all over-ridden by thoughts and ideas on which Creativity Adda is set up. Here the learner is respected as an individual and her/his unique learning needs creates the learning program.
Children and adults from ages 10–80 years attend workshops, learn and create together. The value there is we can constantly keep learning and from everyone irrespective of their age or degrees. The rooms have been colourfully painted and doodled upon by students and facilitators and friends together, with inspiring quotes, pictures and work by the students.
When its sunny and warm in winters, the playground turns into a jamming space. In various corners, one can find some children self-organizing deep into serious chess, some musical souls are singing and playing various instruments, some energetic ones running around chasing the football, some cooking and doing experiments across in the kitchen.
I returned from the Adda more energetic and happy, definitely healed with the new kind of learning and with a burning desire to learn more about clowning and Djambe. It lit the flame of learning more in me.
I feel everything at Adda is challenging the conventional learning spaces which are more like jails and no where close to a nuturing enviornment for a lifelong and life-wide learning. The space, the people and the ideas at Creativity Adda are revolutionizing the way learning should happen in 21st century. All this, in spite of it being on a low budget, being in the old lanes of Dariya Ganj and being extremely simple and informal in its approach.
I can’t forget the moments when Saud (a naughty chap of 15 years old), with full ownership, made it his task to not let me sit idle. He got me to play badminton, kick the football hard, sing my lungs out and laugh hysterically.
A little background about the space: The Creativity Adda is an ‘unschool’, self-designed learning space, for the students of Commercial (government-aided) School and the local community in Daryaganj, Delhi. It was initiated in 2015 by Shikshantar Andolan and DS Group. It runs throughout the year daily from 2–5pm.
