Week 3: When ideas danced to the sound of accordion

An accordion is a musical instrument that is played by stretching and squeezing with hands. Week 3 of art class started with us showing some accordion zines we made to the children.

One of the zines we showed was about Yayoi Kusama, an artist who used dots to represent art. This stirred curiosity in the classroom and we could see the boys wanting to learn how to cut and fold and make a similar accordion zine.

Zines are short for magazines. The idea of zines got popular in 1930's when the printing press emerged. Artists and writers started self-publishing with zines and it was a joy witness this transition happen live in class - we just posed one question - what are your passions, interests and dreams?

Children started posing cute kutty kutty questions to us like "Akka, I want to represent my favourite hairstyle; what symbols do I use for this?", "Anna, I want to draw all the planets in the universe, how do I cut circles with scissors?".

Slowly, I started observing children not just mirror us but mirror their peers and each other and make something similar; yet something of thier own. It felt like watching a self-publishing community come alive!

It was fun to watch them race against time to finish their zines and show it to their peers and playing with them like an accordian. And the joy continues...

Stay tuned for more magic the children are brewing!

This blog is penned by Chandhni S, one of the team members of Kutty Kutty Stories.