Artists needed for Dreaming Child Production's upcoming education festival 'Open My Mind' which is on 9th April 2011

Contact : 9810833300 (Mahima Kaur)


Introduction : Dreaming Child serves to create a loving environment for children where “LEARNING BECOMES NATURAL AND EFFORTLESS”. We believe that if we go hands in hand with a child’s internal state of mind and body we can create systems of education where learning happens naturally.
We create such natural environments for children by:
1. Conducting fun workshops in different schools, NGO’s and Organizations in the fields of Arts, Science, Indian culture and Spirituality.
2. Organizing children festivals and teacher training programs to make education for teachers, children and parents a joyful and creative experience.
3. Creating exciting trips for children where they can directly learn from different environments.
4. Running our Create a Dream volunteer project in many basti’s where we invite professionals and students to create a living dream with the children. Currently we have workshops in the fields of Pottery, Salsa, Film making, Presentation giving, Science Exploration, Theatre, Costume design, Soorya yog and many more happening in Swati, DPS  Shiksha Kendre and Vidya and Child.
5. Re-designing classroom spaces and curriculums to make learning and teaching natural and effortless.

We are currently working with
  • Vidya Sanskar School , Faridabad
  • The Sunshine Club
  • Vidya and Child School
  • DPS Shiksha Kendre, Mathura Road
  • Swati
  •         Vidya, Gurgaon
Our Achievements
We started our journey, 2 years ago, with a group of 12 children who underwent a film making project. Those films have already been selected at the Film Booth International Film Festivals, Madhurai Film festival, Alpavirama Festival organized by NID in Ahmadabad and Jaipur Film Festival.  The children have also gotten the opportunity to act in professional films. More than the films we cherish the transformation that the children have undergone. In the light of this transformation Dreaming Child Production was born. Today we are catering to 1000 children, working with five organizations, supporting them in making the experience of learning a joyful one!

About the Festival : Open My Mind is an educational festival organised by Dreaming Child Productions.
This festival serves to keep alive the spirit of exploration and creation in our current education system to make learning a joyful and effortless expereince for the children.
It will be held at the Global Arts Village, Mehrauli, New Delhi on 9nd April, 2011. 210 children within the age bracket of 8-16 years are invited from schools i.e. Vidya and Child School(Noida), and DPS Shiksha Kendra (Mathura Road). Workshops will happen the entire day where children can come, explore and create in any form of art of their choice from the following seven fields:-
1. Film Making,
2. Theater
3. Arts
4. Design
5. Dance
6. Music
7. Creative Writing

                                        “Why Open MY Mind for Children”
After doing research for three years in five schools in Delhi, Noida and Faridabad, we have found that  learning and teaching has become an ardeous process as opposed to a joyful one. To make learning a joyful and effortless experience we feel that the following points are serious gaps in the education system that must be met.
1. The spirit of questioning must be kept alive in a child
2. A child must be given the freedom to explore his/her talents & abilities and a platform to express it.
3. Projects must be action orientated, giving children the opportunity to collaborate and create, as opposed to memorize information.
4. All teachers must connect to each of their students, understanding their physical and mental state and catering to that.

Through this event we wish to bridge these gaps in the current education system by,

1. Exposing the children to different fields of learning. This will ignite in them the spirit of exploring and questioning.
2. Giving the children the freedom to choose what they want to learn, as opposed to what they find in their curriculum. This will enable them to get to know their interests, hobbies or even career.
3. Letting the children create together, using their newly acquired knowledge. This will allow them and the teachers to experience how effortless learning can be.
                                 Open MY Mind : A Festival of Learning for Children
We are teaching the subject of arts in this event because through the arts any subject can be taught. Often art is looked upon as an extracurricular activity, but we see as a tool to learn any subject in this world in a fun way. For example, film making can be used to learn history by making a documentary on the Mughals. It could also be used by children interested in communication to create their own news channel! How exiting is that? Thus, arts is one of the best ways to teach a child because it is action oriented and requires allot of collaborative efforts amongst the children. It also allows the children to create and showcase something of their own, which is a great learning experience itself.
We hope that the teachers and children who come to this event experience learning as a joyful process and can create similar environments in their own classroom in the future.  We also hope the children get to know themselves and their talents better, so that they can start on a journey to discover their interest, hobbies or even careers in the future.
Schedule
In the venue we will have seven stalls for the seven different fields being taught in the festival. For example Stall 1 will have all the film making workshops, Stall 2 will have all the theatre workshops and so forth. The event will go on from 9AM – 6PM. There will be no entry fee and we will be providing lunch and snacks free of cost to the children.


A Starting Point: After this event we will have a feedback session and a database will be prepared of what each child has liked the most and then accordingly we will make his/her learning journey in that field possible. If their interests change along the way we will make it possible from them to explore other fields of learning.
We incourage all those who will be a part of this event, to volunteer with us or support us even after this event, to make the journey of exploration possible for the children in the future.
Open MY Mind is a starting point for a creative journey to begin for each child. Therefore, we wish for you to join hands with us to take this movement forward where we aim to transform the education system of our country.