BiographySrivi believes that our greatest surprises happen when our inner skies meet the outer ones and we discover the fun of playing in rain, running through wind and muddling with puddles. And when all these surprises happen, guess what! you can be you, and there is no limit to all the things you can do, because who knows, you might be You the falcon, you the rainbow, you the banyan tree becoming a forest, you the octopus and you the cosmos. She loves to play, imagine and be silly and then with all the happiness that comes from that, she likes to soar with her brush and paints, pen and paper and write, illustrate, and make books for children. At other times she is seen teaching them and laughing a lot because when the inner sky and outer sky meet, there is a lot of fun to be had and a great many surprises happen all the time. Srivi Kalyan is an artist, designer, educator, writer and researcher. She works at the fluid and exciting intersection of arts, media, education, design, environment and self-reflection. She is the Founder-Director of Fooniferse Arts. She is one of the Deans for the interdisciplinary practices in Law, Environment and Planning at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Bengaluru, India and heads the B.Des and M.Des programs in Information Arts and Information Design Practices and the M.Des program in Earth Education and Communication. She has designed an integrated 5 year Doctoral program in Reimagining Transitions and also leads the same. She is the Principal Investigator at her lab Līla - Artist Research Studio and one of the Principle Investigators of the Centre for Reimagining Transitions. Her doctoral work focused on Indian philosophical traditions, aesthetics and personal art practice to uncover intrinsic ecological consciousness. Blending expertise in research and practice across multiple disciplines, Srivi brings transdisciplinary approaches and insights to her work. Srivi’s commitment to meaningful education began as a pre-schooler, when she came back home and diligently started to teach her dolls. With their intuitive belief in creative and thoughtful education, Srivi's parents have been her life-long guides and mentors. She was inspired by the loving respect they gave to little minds and souls, creating safe, challenging and creative spaces for them to grow in. Art and Education have both been an inseparable passion for her and in art-education, she found a way to integrate the two. Srivi believes in working closely with young people, making their creative nature visible to them through the processes of art making, listening to each other, and closely observing their connection to nature. To her education is about nurturing holistic people. She believes that education should not focus on how successful students are in the corporate world or elsewhere, but how genuine they are to living life with purpose and inner strength. She strongly believes that being an educator also involves being a good role model as children learn more from our gestures than our carefully planned programs. Being an artist, designer and entrepreneur who is constantly learning herself, she finds that children and young people connect better when they know that the person who teaches them has a dream and is living it every day. Her work and workshops draw in the rich connections between language, art, performance, thought, and play. By creating open and powerful sanctuaries in her educational workshops, she explores leadership, creative and critical thinking, community development and team building. She has authored and illustrated several children’s books as well as stories for adults and is an award winning writer and illustrator. Her stories and illustrations have been published by Katha, Puffin, Tulika, Ediciones Castillo, Oxford Bookstore Website, Reader’s Digest, Manoj Prakshan and others. She also writes on art and art education in magazines and websites like Parent Circle, Azim Premji Foundation’s Learning Curve, thealternative.in and others. She has worked for some of the leading educational/edutainment organizations like Sesame Street, NCERT, idiscoveri, Katha, Tulika, Birla Edutech, Ilango’s Art space, designing cutting edge books and media for children and young people on one end, and workshops, curriculum, teacher training modules, interdisciplinary strengthening, design and delivery of curriculums on the other. Her work through the creation of educational media reaches millions of children across India through reprints of textbooks, and creative products. She has a Masters in Arts in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, Cambridge and a Masters in Fine Arts from Stella Maris College, Chennai. In a society that is constantly growing into greater violence, health issues, environmental destruction, her work in education is to build a strong voice for sustainable and compassionate living. And through the arts, she finds a way to engage people in the most important conversations they must have with themselves. |
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