SAIIER 2018:Mira Cultural Group

Mandala Practice		Mother's Photographs
Mira Cultural Group

At Entity::Mira Cultural Group we believe that music and dance can envelop and go beyond the barriers of any religion or cultural differences and embrace all differences within. We would like to integrate bio-region people, especially children and women, in the Auroville cultural life by teaching them dances, vocal and instrumental music.

The children are our future, gifted with a lot of skills and talents and full of future possibilities. The group itself encourages the women & children to learn extracurricular activities out of school studies. These activities are connected to the rich heritage of Bharatiya Samskritam.

This type of program offers unique opportunities to Auroville and village students who are not able to join such classes in the city. In the future elder students may teach new ones.

Besides, as a team, we also benefit, learn and grow as we love to create a place that encourages and promotes collective spirit.

Activities of the year:

Every year there are more students.  In 2017-18 the numbers were:

• Classical Music: 27 children, 1 woman
• Folk Dance: 7 children, 4 women
• Bharata Natiyam dance: 27 children

The four teachers are professional and qualified music & art teachers. The classes take place on weekends at the SAWCHU building in Bharat Nivas. The students are from Auroville and surrounding villages, aged from 6 to 51 years, including boys, girls and women.

Outcomes:

We have more students attending and benefiting. 9 children come from Auroville and the rest come from the bioregion. We evaluated the classes in different places like Bharat Nivas and Edyanchavadi village. The coming year we are planning to start classes in two more places, Irumbai and Kottakarai, for those children to also benefit.

All the students presented live performances in Folk dance, Bharata Natiyam and Classical music vocals. The performances took place at:

• Diwali festival function in October 2017 at Solar Kitchen, Auroville.
• Tamil New Year, 14 April 2017 program at Bharat Nivas.
• Sangamam festival at Football ground, Aurodam.

Reflections:

Most meaningful in our activities is sharing the Auroville free spirit. The education pedagogy and level is different in Auroville from outside schools. Teachers from outside who come and teach to Auroville children learn about alternative styles of education and free progress classes. Also the outside children benefit from this approach.

Nowadays teachers typically charge per student instead of per class. But for our classes we find the teachers who are willing to teach without concern for the number of students. That way more students can benefit from our program.

Children are very eager to learn and want to progress. But we realize that some disciplines like Raga in classical music, and also dance, require very regular if not daily practice. So we realize that weekly classes are not enough to allow for proper follow-up and development of advanced learning in these fields, or that further encouragement needs to be provided, such as more classes.

Conclusion:

We are working in the name of togetherness and interconnectedness. A couple of the villages offered their spaces for us to use for the dance and music classes as well as for educational spaces – some expressed they would like to learn English so that they can find work in Auroville, others that they would like to learn maths so they can better manage their household budgets. Their interest in collaborating in this way inspires us to keep working together.

The program has helped to foster development of the women and children at the personal and the community level. On top of that we seek to provide occasions for contact between Auroville and the bioregion and aspire to open up that space, to build bridges of friendship and collaboration between the two.