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Dear Friends, Comrades, Artists, and Fellow Dance Community,
My name is Shweta and I am a fellow under the NGO Slam Out Loud, where I facilitate arts based socio emotional learning (SEL) workshops that equip students with social awareness, communication, emotional management, and relationship building skills to students of socio- economically marginalized background in two low income private schools of Bengaluru. As part of the fellowship, educators are mandated to undertake a project that fosters creative expression as a tool for community building and/or restorative healing.
Youth Unfiltered: Dance as Resistance was an initiative brought forth to me by the students of Elite English School in Neelasandra with a keen interest of learning the HipHop and Street Style foundations, that they otherwise would not have access to due to the structural disenfranchising of Neelasandra and its predominantly Muslim/migrant residents. Rare are the opportunities to rigorously train in art and make connections to art professionals who are willing to come and teach within nontraditional studio settings. Spaces to intentionally and creatively reflect on emotions through somatic practices are often gatekept to upper class and caste folks. To widen these exclusivities, we have curated a series of workshops to be conducted by dancers from Chennai and Bengaluru for 4-5 weeks using SEL facilitation leading up to a cypher/battle. During the weeks leading up to the cypher-battle students will also be involved in the organizational team and take on leadership roles through guidance from me and the dancers. This is done to equip students with the tools on how to host their own such events in the long run. This project also presents itself as an avenue for dance practitioners seeking to expand their curriculum with socio emotional learning based pedagogies and redistribute the wealth of professional expertise they hold in dance to marginalized youth keen on exploring street style genres of dance seriously.
Since this is a project undertaken by NGO, we do not have sufficient budgets to pay our artists for their time and commitment to these students dance education journeys, and we are calling on our networks and loved ones to help make this project possible for our students in Neelasandra. Our budget requirements are as follows:
My name is Shweta and I am a fellow under the NGO Slam Out Loud, where I facilitate arts based socio emotional learning (SEL) workshops that equip students with social awareness, communication, emotional management, and relationship building skills to students of socio- economically marginalized background in two low income private schools of Bengaluru. As part of the fellowship, educators are mandated to undertake a project that fosters creative expression as a tool for community building and/or restorative healing.
Youth Unfiltered: Dance as Resistance was an initiative brought forth to me by the students of Elite English School in Neelasandra with a keen interest of learning the HipHop and Street Style foundations, that they otherwise would not have access to due to the structural disenfranchising of Neelasandra and its predominantly Muslim/migrant residents. Rare are the opportunities to rigorously train in art and make connections to art professionals who are willing to come and teach within nontraditional studio settings. Spaces to intentionally and creatively reflect on emotions through somatic practices are often gatekept to upper class and caste folks. To widen these exclusivities, we have curated a series of workshops to be conducted by dancers from Chennai and Bengaluru for 4-5 weeks using SEL facilitation leading up to a cypher/battle. During the weeks leading up to the cypher-battle students will also be involved in the organizational team and take on leadership roles through guidance from me and the dancers. This is done to equip students with the tools on how to host their own such events in the long run. This project also presents itself as an avenue for dance practitioners seeking to expand their curriculum with socio emotional learning based pedagogies and redistribute the wealth of professional expertise they hold in dance to marginalized youth keen on exploring street style genres of dance seriously.
Since this is a project undertaken by NGO, we do not have sufficient budgets to pay our artists for their time and commitment to these students dance education journeys, and we are calling on our networks and loved ones to help make this project possible for our students in Neelasandra. Our budget requirements are as follows:
- 3,000-4,000 rupees for dancer's remuneration
- 1800 rupees to sources notebooks/journals for approximately 50 kids
- any exceeding funds will go directly towards the cypher-battle organization and set up
