At the Neighborhood Arts Center in Yatkha Bahal, nearby Basantpur Durbar Square, a blank sheet of paper is open to all sorts of possibilities.[break]
“You can make a collage, but even a collage can be made in so many different ways,” states the founder of the Center, 30-year-old Sharareh Bajracharya. She adds, “Arts in education is about how to make people think out of the box instead of trying to make them artists.”
Sharareh started art classes with children at Yatkha Bahal two years back, using the outdoor spacious courtyard as her workspace.
“When I first came here, I asked the children if they wanted to make art and they didn’t say yes or no but asked, “When?”,” she relates the story of the Center’s beginning. Here, Sharareh is the kids’ Didi.
In February 2011, Sharareh decided to rent a space at the Bahal where classes are now held every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning.
“The children from the Bahal come whenever they want and stay as long as they want,” puts in Sharareh, who pays the rent from her own pocket and also buys the art supplies.
A lot of the materials include recycled paper, old flexes, pieces of cloth, cardboard boxes, and so on. Besides fine arts, the Center also has dance and music classes.
Sharareh cycles to the Center all the way from Chhauni and classes take place whether there are five kids or 40 present. In June this year, she put up a brilliant exhibition of the kids’ works at the Nepal Art Council as part of her Bachelor of Arts in Education final year project from the Kathmandu University Center for Art & Design (KUart).
Sharareh also holds another Bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Education and a Masters degree in Education, Culture & Society. She will be working to develop and teach the Arts in Education program at KUart.
“Overcoming their fear of creating something has been the biggest growth of these children,” she states and shares an instance, “One of the kids said that he’d failed in drawing class at school and didn’t want to draw.”
But at the Center, no one is judged and no one receives marks for what they make, and the kids’ fears have turned into boundless creativity.
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