Artistic Directors Academy in Nepal with Sharareh Bajracharya / Srijanalaya
Details
Wed, 25 December–Thu, 26 December, 2024
Nepal
A two-day reflection designed by Sharareh Bajracharya for Srijanalaya inviting a diverse group of artists and cultural workers to reflect on the format of artist-led residency in Khokana that views the key educator as place, as an entity. “What can we learn from a place, and what can a place teach us?”
Srijanalaya is using this as an opportunity to work with collaborators Shikshya Foundation Nepal to inquire about the next steps for the program ArtWorks! Sangai Khelaun which we began together in 2015, after the earthquake. SFN and Srijanalaya have been working with the belief that the increased visibility of the arts through localised, place-based art forms hold ways of sharing knowledge that can counter and resist against an education system that values and privileges the Nepali language, rote learning and text-based knowledge over marginalized communities’ knowledge and histories. Artistic Directors Academy (ADA) will join in these discussions as observers who are dedicated to creating inclusive and critical art programs in their own practices.
The reflection will be organized across two days. The first day will be focused on exploring stories and narratives about and in Khokana by both walking through the place as well as listening to people who will be sharing historical perspectives. We then learn more about the Mural art residency and engage in what is emerging from the artist-in-residence’s works. Guest artists, SFN, Srijanalaya Board and members, people involved in ArtWorks!, Artistic Directors Academy (ADA), and the second day speakers will be participating.
The second day will be followed with an overall summary/sharing about ArtWorks! Sangai Khelaun across five years, followed by two speakers. One person will review the five years of ArtWorks! and the second person will share a range of possibilities and important concepts around “place-making” and “place-based learning”. We will use these critical commentaries as prompts to move into a discussion session with people who have participated in previous ArtWorks!, SFN, Srijanalaya’s Board, and Artistic Directors Academy (ADA).
About Sharareh Bajracharya / Srijanalaya
Sharareh is a Kathmandu-based arts educator who believes in the power of the arts to make the earth tremble, loosen up for change, change that begins with expressing and listening. She is one of the founders of Srijanalaya, a nonprofit organisation in Nepal, which creates safe spaces of learning through the arts. She was a CISA 2018 Fellow at KHOJ. Her curatorial endeavour is to open up questions that have been silenced and to unlearn different forms of indoctrination. She completed her BFA in Painting and Art Education from the Kathmandu University Centre for Art and Design, her Bachelor’s in Early Childhood Development from Tufts University, and her Master’s in Education, Culture, and Society from the University of Pennsylvania.
Srijanalaya is a nonprofit, nongovernmental organisation established to create safe spaces of learning through the arts. They imagine a Nepal where every child has the tools necessary and the support to express and be heard.
A growing community of artists and educators in Nepal, they offer creative mediums as an alternative approach to rote-learning and static textbooks.
