In a Bengal village, urban and rural children meet over art

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City students creating a village, and colony   children creating a metropolis  connected  the wall.

City students creating a village, and colony children creating a metropolis connected the wall. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

It was a lawsuit of municipality gathering the agrarian — much specifically a metropolis gathering the colony — connected the level of creation erstwhile young minds of Bengal came unneurotic for a store to recognize each different better.

On Friday (October 24, 2025), elder students of the La Martiniere for Boys schoolhouse successful Kolkata spent the time successful the colony of Konedoba successful Jhargram district, coating a partition unneurotic with the children of this Santhal-dominated settlement, which is dilatory turning into an creation hub.

They worked unneurotic connected the motion of infinity: connected 1 fractional of the horizontal ‘8’ the colony students painted their imaginativeness of a city, and connected the different fractional the metropolis students created their content of a village.

“It was the lawsuit of students from an upscale, English-medium satellite coming to a backward colony to enactment connected the aforesaid partition with its children. Once they started moving together, the differences melted distant successful nary time, it nary longer mattered who came from a prosperous inheritance and who came from a humble background,” creator Mrinal Mandal said astir the workshop, titled ‘The Traversal’.

City students creating a village, and colony   children creating a metropolis  connected  the wall.

City students creating a village, and colony children creating a metropolis connected the wall. | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

“Some 20 boys came from La Martiniere, from Classes 8 to 12. They were joined by astir 50 children from Konedoba. We had created the infinity motion connected a wall, connected which the La Martiniere boys created their content of a village, and the colony children created what they thought was a city. We spot this arsenic an speech — this benignant of an inaugural is precise important to hitch retired people differences,” the creator said.

Mr. Mandal, a postgraduate of Kolkata’s Government Arts College, has been surviving successful the villages of Jhargram since 2018, archetypal processing a colony called Lalbazar into an creation hub and present taking the inaugural to different village, called Konedoba, 7 kilometres away. Both these projects are promoted by a Kolkata-based corporate called Chalchitra Academy, of which the creator is simply a founding member.

“It was a fantastic acquisition visiting Khwaabgaon [’dream village’, arsenic these 2 settlements are present called by those bringing astir the transformation]. Our students had the accidental to research their creativity done coating and artwork nether your guidance. The interactive league and the accidental to overgarment connected the partition made the sojourn genuinely memorable,” a squad of teachers that led the students from Kolkata wrote to the Chalchitra Academy.

Published - October 25, 2025 05:51 p.m. IST

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