Since 2007 Creative Junction have been working with Hlanganani Learning Partnership to collaborate with the Aarti Home in Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, in order to develop a strong and sustainable education partnership between young people and teachers in the Thames Valley UK and young people in Andhra Pradesh.
The collaborations, supported through the Creative Partnerships programme, enabled young people from Newlands Girls School to work with young women from the Aarti Home in 2008 and 2009. The project planned to focus on sharing creative writing between a small group of girls of similar ages in Aarti Home and in Newlands; sharing images through digital photography would also form part of this exchange project with the aim of deepening cultural understanding, increasing confidence and developing creative skills in young people in both countries
The juxtaposition of writing and images was central to the way this project looks and to what was sent to the young people in Aarti Home, in the hope that they would be enabled to collaborate with each other and with creative partners and teachers, in order to develop their own skills and share their own stories, in words and images.
Since the project has ended Aarti home have been continuing the work and linking up with Newlands using Skype and other web technology.
In July 2010 three young women, Suneetha, Sree Lakshmi and Anusha, represented Aarti Home on a visit to the UK for two weeks. They followed a full programme of school visits, presentations and cultural activities, setting up connections and partnerships. The women were interviewed by Creative Junction when they arrived in the UK and their stories can be heard on the video below.
One of the main features of their presentations was a film that had been made in partnership with George Kurian, a film maker who had been involved in the making of the ground-breaking BBC programme, India’s Missing Girls, directed by Ashok Prasad. The project was funded by the Commonwealth Foundation and can be seen as Aarti Home shelter film project on You Tube.
“This is not something [the young people] are generally exposed to here, either in school or through the larger media, so perhaps by seeing your children in action they can begin to learn by example”. P V Sandhya President Vijay Foundation Trust Kadapa