THE CURRENT
World over teachers, leaders, students, and families are coming together to have important conversations about how schools must change to equip students with knowledge, skills, and mindsets they need to thrive in the future. There is a growing awareness that the current education does little to promote critical, spontaneous, and creative thinking. It is in this context that rethinking the linear and non-experiential nature of Indian education becomes crucial.
WHAT WE DO
STRATEGIC DESIGN IN EDUCATION
By weaving content and capacity, The Craft Caravan helps evaluate and generate synergies between different participants of the learning ecosystem. We use this space to broker conversations across disciplines and to co-create meaningful connections.
Our work in this domain has been with civil society organisations, non-formal education, formal education, research, and training centers.
POLICY | EDUCATION RESEARCH | FACILITATION
ART INTEGRATION IN THE HUMANITIES
Using curriculums that are pivoted around Making and Project-Based Learning, we design and facilitate art integrated engagements to increase participation in the Arts and Humanities. We believe that Making is a way to understand, learn, express, and build empathy, we don’t relegate it to the confines of a hobby table.
The Craft Caravan has designed programs for schools, corporates, and organisations across India.
CURRICULUM DESIGN | WORKSHOPS
OUR APPROACH
THE CONSCIOUS LEARNING FRAMEWORK
The Craft Caravan designs learning ecologies where knowledge is created and not merely transferred. Our Conscious Learning Framework, weaves three dimensions Culture, Aesthetics & Futures into an alliance to create unbound and open learning. Using this methodology we enable lifelong learning, creativity, curiosity, and openness to change.
Cultural Ecosystems
Cultural Ecosystems are often undervalued in formal education. However, traditional knowledge such as artisanal crafts, community practices, and cultural beliefs not only lead us into the uniqueness of local culture, they also allow us to think with care and responsibility for the future. Using social, cultural, place-based projects, The Craft Caravan connects people and places into elegant tapestries of shared meaning.
Aesthetics and Art
Aesthetics and Art are overpowered in formal education due to the homogenisation of expression and experience, however, the principles of aesthetics and beauty are fundamental to the creation of all knowledge. The Craft Caravan uses art experiences to nurture, appreciate, reflective, cultural, and participatory engagements. Using aesthetic encounters, we enable the learner to notice, seek resemblances, collaborate, and co-create meaning.
Futures Thinking
Futures Thinking is informed reflection that goes beyond rote learning. While it is important to study the past to understand culture and tradition, it is equally important to study the future to anticipate change. Using practical tools, and multidisciplinary approaches, The Craft Caravan empowers students to make sense of the accelerated changes happening around them, envision a preferred future, and understand their role in shaping it.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Culture as Context
Local and cultural contexts to understand global challenges, opportunities & connections.
Learner-centered
Relevant and engaging learning to enable student agency, participation, and motivation.
Inquiry Led
Learning grounded in observing, asking relevant questions, making predictions, and collecting information to understand the inter-connected world.
Systemic Thinking
Using systemic design methodologies to generate value and insights in learning
People and Place
A generative ecosystem, where individual experiences, people, and place are used to build understanding.
Transdisciplinarity
Interconnected curriculums that bring together various fields of knowledge and skills through application, and project-based methodologies.
OUR JOURNEY
OUR PROJECTS
ART AT WORK
ART FOR ORGANISATIONS
For organisation and enterprises we design bespoke sessions that use art as the medium to facilitate relationship building through learning, action and expression. These programmes are designed to build creative agency and innovation, develop artful leadership, and to engage and motivate employees.
ART AS PLAY
FACILITATOR TRAINING
Our Playful Learning modules are designed as participatory learning spaces, the pedagogy is pivoted around art integrated approaches in which the participants build their own cognitive tools as well as external realities. Ideas in this space are formed and expressed through multi-modal and tactile mediums.
OUR CLIENTS
TESTIMONIALS
“Thank you Aparna for being you. It was refreshing meeting you, a person who believes in the creativity of every individual and beliefs that every idea that comes from every child is precious and deserves expression. Errors and mistakes are not to be ridiculed or feared. All of these thoughts are so empowering, and every child in the workshop must have felt it too.”
Archana Dange, Founder, Bookmark
“I am so happy we have someone like an Aparna in our city. Her program is like a breath of fresh air – giving the kids an opportunity to discover Bangalore Heritage in a way I never thought possible! It is amazing when my son Tarosh comes home and talks about arches, turrets, & forts. I can happily say that I have been educated on quite a few things myself.”
Purnima Castelino-D’abreo, Participant, Little City Trails
“The Craft Caravan has conducted sessions on Origami and there is one planned on Color, Stories, and Woodworking as well. These are group sessions with tasks given to us that are both fun and serious at the same time and stick in our memory for a long time. We are sure to engage them in the future for other sessions similar to this.”
Rajesh Sahadevan, CEO, Center of Gravity
“The Craft Caravan conducted a week long summer workshop for Anweshana Montessori House of Children. The workshop used unique methods to integrate art with curriculum. The focus of the workshop was to learn through observation, application and play. The Craft Caravan was meticulous is arriving at the activities that aligned with the pedagogy of our institution.”
Bharathi G., Principal, Anweshana Montessori House of Children
OUR SERVICES
Since 2014 we have delivered a variety of learning projects spanning content and strategic design. Using the Conscious Learning Framework we have developed educational scenarios that champion interdisciplinarity and embodied inquiry. On our mission to accelerate positive change in education we work with —
EDUCATIONAL
INSTITUTIONS
Design curriculums that build a culture of lifelong learning, knowledge creation within the framework of learner diversity.
CORPORATES
& ENTERPRISES
Planning and developing tools to facilitate training and capacity-building for teachers/teams using Design Thinking frameworks.
EDUCATION
RESEARCH & POLICY
Backed by integral frameworks and research we strengthen institutional capacites through policy, monitoring, and evaluation of learning programmes.
INDIVIDUALS & HOMESCHOOLERS
Design and facilitate personalised learning modules that cater to the open and exploratory nature of unschooling and deschooling requirements.
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