Tana Bana
Education philosopher Maxine Greene affirms the power of arts and aesthetic education “for a more informed and imaginative awareness” to create “critical transactions that empower students to resist both elitism and objectivism, that allow them to read and to name, to write and to rewrite their own lived worlds”.
While all of Aagaaz’s work has the belief in the power of the processes of arts and aesthetics as its core, Tana Bana is the spine of the practice that supports this belief. The arts, and in our case more specifically theatre, opens windows into complex and layered realities that can otherwise be challenging to address or express, creating opportunities to think critically, celebrate differences, take risks and seek justice not only for ourselves but for others who are perhaps more challenged.
Through Tana Bana, we are creating and enacting a rich arts-based pedagogy in a space built for learning, play, and leisure. Through this work, our goal is to set children up with socio-emotional, cognitive, and artistic skills that they are able to rely on, and to build long-lasting relationships with families in Nizamuddin Basti.
Tana Bana
Khwāb Ghar, meaning the ‘house of dreams’, is our community arts center and library located in the heart of Nizamuddin Basti. It provides a safe space for the community and its children, a home for our arts and library-based sessions, community events, creative practice, and more. Click below to learn more about our programmes:
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These are sessions with groups of students that can last for a duration of anywhere between 10 days to a year. These are not begun with a decision of long-term engagement. Theatre making and sharing it with an audience while engaging with certain thematic concern with students is almost always the core focus of this work. Here, drama becomes the engagement, the exploration and the expression.
Thematic Engagements
Drama Jams
The Sunday Drama Jams are a twice monthly free-peer sharing space for anyone who likes to play drama games or works with people using drama. The attempt is to innovate new possibilities of play and to create a space that runs organically without a meta-facilitator, curated in-the-moment by only the people in the room.
