An Invitation to Participate in a Creative Arts Programme for Hobby, Education and Examinations: The Traditional Arts of your community
A Traditional Arts Exchange:
Bring, exchange and buy!
Please forward to teachers!
When I am not blogging I am supposed to be working in my main job in economics. Nah! The arts are more creative.
In 1999 I created the Festival of Ephemeral Arts and it was an immediate success. During the last ten years, over 15,000 visitors have attended the festival and over 40 schools in London and the South East of England have taken part. These attendance figures would have been a lot higher but another project, known as “Earning a Living” has taken time. Yes, my own income has also subsidised the festival and the development programme. Having said this, this project has also won substantial arts funding from the Arts Council, local authorities and the National Lottery fund in the UK.
Students at GCSE level have found the festival very helpful in creating a research projects for their coursework assessment.
Many other students and teachers regularly download materials from the festival website which is located at:
www.ephemeralarts.com
A Note for Parents, Grandparents, Teachers and School Librarians:
The Festival programme has now been taken over by a new trading entity known as Mirador Creative Culture. We are investing significantly in developing the creative arts and cultural outcomes of what I call time-based culture. These are the arts which are temporary or short-lived, based on a specific occasion or event and transitory in nature.
Think of the rangoli, the Tibetan mandala or the good old Christmas tree! They are all examples of work that is created for an occasion and then is destroyed after the event. Note: the Christmas tree is not a good example!
The forthcoming programmes are aimed at encouraging maximum participation of children from late primary school and the whole of secondary school.
Can you help?
Yes, you can help by:
Circulating information and advising children who are joining secondary school to visit the above website.
Recommending to GCSE level students to contact us and to see how they can create an original school project for submission as a course work assessment. Over ten schools took part in Slough and we believe that 200 students received excellent grades in the course work assessment
Recommending university students of art to get involved in the academic programme. Various online seminars and “webinars” are planned.
Asking teachers of arts, culture, liberal studies, anthropology and geography to contact me to discuss how they may get involved. A great deal of the work is to be carried out via websites and blogs. We have plans to create a Virtual Festival as well. So teachers and school librarians will find it helpful to take part.
Asking Parents of children of all ages to contact us and discuss how they be able to create various links to culture and for their children’s guidance and support for the education at home.
The background to this work can be found at www.asianartsaccess.org This is the original work programme that I created in 1989 as a hobby but it has grown as a result of public and official support. When I am not doing this work, I am working business and economics to earn money, quite a lot of which finds its way into this passion! But then creative people are always a bit crazy as well.
Contacts:
Kalwant Ajimal FRSA, Founder
East African Asians- The New Wahindi 