Saavi 2 - A Look into March 23, 2024

The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself. – Maria Montessori

Saavi 2 began with a wish to explore the mind through the work of the hands. We designed an approach to take the participants to a journey whether they feel and appreciate the importance of hands in their everyday life. Each session was designed to build a layer to bring the significance of hands.

Session 1 – Choice of Wood or Cloth

               We gave participants a choice between wood and cloth to create a product. This time we were ready to split into 2 teams where one team worked on wood and the other team worked on cloth.

Wood team took up the task of building a serving tray. Participants in the wood team designed a serving tray from measurements to strategy of putting it together. The facilitators’ role was to guide the participants on how to use the tools appropriately. Children were able to choose the size, draw the design and identify the required wood for the work.

The cloth team wanted to design a coffee coaster in triangular shape. In the beginning they struggled to create a triangle with equal sides, this brought an opportunity to discuss about equilateral triangle. While designing they also discussed about different shapes of coffee cups and how different shapes are used in coasters.

For some children, this was the first time in handling tools. Each member supported when one person is handling tools. At the same time, they made the decisions together in each step.

  At the end of session, participants were guided to explore the steps in designing a product and the different things involved like customers, sales, costing. Together all of them worked on designing a product and an advertisement for the product.

It was a subtle exploration building a product with human hands.

Session 2 – Art

The art session was a culmination of 2 concepts – Sound and community. Participants were asked to listen to a sound – shirt hanger hitting a wall with a rope connected to their ears and asked to interpret the sound through a drawing. From their own drawings, each participant chose a favorite part and used this part of the art to write a food, place, person and flower which resembled the art. The paper was circulated to the next person and the second participant also identified a food, place, person and flower which resembled the art. The paper was again circulated in the circle to the next participant and participants were asked to create a story using the 2 set of inputs. The paper was again circulated, the next person was asked to re-write the story with changing letters with imagination of sounds – like if the word is JUMP then the participants need to use a font to represent the sound and emotions.

When each participant read the story with the sound and emotions, it was so wonderful to listen. When participants were asked to relate to the first sound and the story, it was surprising to see how each participant was able to connect to the sound using the story created through a communal effort.

This gave participants an opportunity to understand the joy of being in a community, enjoy each other’s work and also relate to their own perception through the work. Participants were also able to connect the sound as a sensorial experience and connect it to the perceptions of different people in the circle.

Session 3 – Poetry

The session was designed to emphasize the importance of hands in human life. The session started with a game to do a work without using thumbs and also share works that can be carried out without the help of thumb.  This game gave an idea of the design of the human hand and how it is different from animals. Participants shared their observation about hands of monkeys, bear and other animals.

Followed by the game, we read the poem “Beautiful hands” which talked about the human hands changes in each phase of a human life (from childhood, adult to old age). Participants were introduced to Acrostic poetry and each one of them created a poem on “Hands”.

During the sharing session, we realized many poems had the word “Gratitude, Blessing” for their own hands. It was beautiful to see these young people have a thought about their hands as a blessing.

Session 4 – Ads up

Participants were asked to create a product of their own and present it through an Advertisement. It was so wonderful to see the level of engagement in this session. Participants were so engrossed in the session and created a product named “White Chocolate” by a company name “POOTTU” (they named their company as POOTTU – Tamil word for LOCK). This is something I love about the teens, their presence of mind, humor and Sarcasm in sharing their thoughts.

               Coming back to the advertisement part, it was about a naturally sweetened, sugar free, healthy chocolate which children can eat without any restrictions. The audience also had an option of buying a sample. My mind voice was “Buying a Sample” – how clever these children are? And also their interest to earn money.