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Bulbule Festival The Bulbule Festival is the first Children's Festival in Lucknow. It brings children and their parents, artists, and educators together for a larger-than-life visual and performing art experience—all at one place! From storytelling to music, workshops to games, music to puppetry, the festival promises to be fun and frolic. In our quest to help build safe maker and learning spaces for children and build places of innovation for children, we celebrate creativity every year at the Bulbule Festival! It started last year, and this year we hosted our 2nd edition! And the festival this year was based on the theme ‘CURIOSITY’; where the idea was to help children’s thinking become visible, for them to become more and more participatory. On the 1st and 2nd day, the festival invited children (grade 3, 4 and 5) from government schools across the city, while the 3rd day saw children from other schools, organizations and parts of the city - from children to organizations, individual walk-ins, parents, educators and art lovers from across the city. The first 2 hours of the festival (everyday) were spent exploring the many workshops like Kabaad se Jugaad, Clowning, Puppetry, Theatre, Tabla & Kathak and Films. An array of artists ad experts to learn from, chat with! While right after that was time for curiosity zone (divided into - land, sea, place and animals) which was a big hit amogst all- where they could delve into different worlds and ecosystems around us. Some enjoyed playing around the jungle, some said hello to their underwater friends like sharks, and dolphins in the sea section. Some enjoyed walking through various places and landmarks while some enjoyed listening to stories in our reading corner. 
Most such festivals are confined to children and educators and parents are engaged only in the managing and picking-dropping of them. Swatantra Talim wanted to change that and give them experiences to have together.
“Maine kahaani suni bhi aur sunaayi bhi. Ab ghar jaakar apne aur doston ko nayi-nayi kahaaniyaan sunaaungi”, Asha, a child who was at the festival on her experience of sitting at the reading corner today “Its interesting how everybody thinks of buying toys, but here we saw a workshop on Toy-making. What a wonderful diea for childre to be able to make and create their own toys - and take more charge of their play time!”, one of the teachers from KK Academy The festival saw a footfall of 1000+ children and young people, plus 50+ educators over the last 3 days - a gathering of people all invested in the joys and lives of children! | ||
Kala YatraKala Yatra - We kickstarted the celebrations of our 10th year, by embarking on our very first Kala Yatra! Kala Yatra is a journey which will go beyond art, and through the ones who create it - to the artisans! We will meet traditional artisans from various walks of life and understand from them what makes art for them what it is. We want to understand what drives them, and know them deeply. Hoping we come back motivated, overjoyed and inspired 🪷
For this year’s Kala Yatra, we took over the city of Varanasi :) |
AashaayeinSwatantra Talim in collaboration with UP Education Department organises an annual function in one of the partner government schools in the Lucknow district. The function is called ‘Aashaayein’, which means hope, a hope for the future of our children, one that sees them through in their journeys as empowered and wise individuals. The function has an array of special acts, games and performances like puppet shows, art and presentation of different poems through contextual material and pop-up books. The students not only got together to put the function together but also actively participated in it wholeheartedly. Our biggest takeaways from Aashaayein is usually ‘collaboration’ and the fact that if people with shared goals got together with their abilities, ideas and hard work, beautiful things happen!
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Tooti-Tata EveningsTooti Tata evenings began as a way to make space for more art, games and stories in people’s hearts. But they’re turning into a fortnightly celebration of our children, supporters and friends. And we’re so glad to have created this mini world for us all, bounded and guarded by magic. These happen bi-monthly at our Design Studio in Lucknow.
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