Art Schooling SRIRAM AYER, 40
“If you learn
mathematics through movement, geometry through shapes and history through storytelling, chances are that you will remember them longer,” believes Sriram Ayer, founder of the NalandaWay Foundation, an organisation that uses art as a means to initiate academic and therapeutic learning processes amongst children. In an education system, where art usually plays an ancillary role in knowledge building, Ayer’s decade-long crusade has been to make it the primary source. However, he faces a responsibility far more challenging than what most mainstream learning modules face today; every child in his camp comes from “severely disadvantaged backgrounds”.
Making it a way of Life
NalandaWay’s work falls under three verticals—art in education, which looks at facilitating early childhood learning through art; art labs, which teaches arts through a structured training programme for kids who display extraordinary talent; and art for healing, which uses art as a catalyst for behavioural change for adolescents with issues of trauma and depression.
A storyteller
Besides being an educationist, Ayer is also an avid writer. His first novel, The Story of a Suicide recently released in a striking, free-for-all online edition preceded by a hauntingly engaging trailer–possibly the first-of-its-kind for a book.