Shraddha Borawake

This weekend, I will be conducting a workshop with the kids of Khirki village on how to make an ad campaign.

The posters to inform the Khirki community are ready.

Today I arrived at Khirki Extension and met up with Ramesh and Manohar at the Khoj office. 

We walked around the village and stuck our little posters in the hope that some children would see them and come by this evening. 

                 

Today I arrived at Khirki Extension and met up with Ramesh and Manohar at the Khoj office. 

We walked around the village and stuck our little posters in the hope that some children would see them and come by this evening. 

                 

On Saturday morning, Ramesh and I met the boys Prakash, Rahul, Sunny, Jaswinder and some newcomers. They had evidently bunked school, and 2 of them had brought back amazing concept sheets. It was a very beautiful begning to an exciting day. We were all charged up to realise these ideas. 

Since I had not shown this group the Dove Evolution film, Pradeep was amazed and now was interested in exploring cut paste options as he was keen on learning photoshop. My challenge was to translate both the written and visual material into a solid concept for the ad campaigns. 

Prakash's Concept Sheet

"In Khirki Masjid, we fly kites, and we chat with our friends" 

"The old style Khirki Masjid ---> The Brand New"

Rahul's campaign 

"World's Best Top Spinner in Khirki Village"

   Our enthusiasm was then shut down within half an hour of the session by some digruntled authorities of the masjid, who asked us to leave and thus disapating our group. The kids went to bum around, leaving was just the 3 of us. Ramesh, Jaswinder and me

This one on one session with Jaswinder was very valuable. Owing to the complexity of the assignment, I was able to truly explain to how to concept, visualise and brand the mosque. 

Jaswinder's Concept Sheet

"Khirki Masjid is best place for hide and seek and other out door games"

After lunch we headed to the mosque and translated his idea in a dress reherseal with Andi, while the other children were being gathered. 

Radha's Concept Sheet

     "The story of this fort is that there was a couple of a queen and a king. They were living happily. Suddenly one day the enemies of king's they fought to each other, the king's enemy wanted his fort and that's why he fought with king. There is a way to underground and king and queen ran away from that way. The enemies lived for a long time and he died. These is a hidden way to go to  Taj Mahal, India Gate, Qutub Minar. 

     The surrounding of this fort was very opened and now it's so congested. The value of the Khirki Village is very high only because of this fort. There are three gates to enter and exit. 

     As I know the story of this fort is that this fort is a historical place. It has many windows so this area is also known as Window Village (Khirki Village)

     In 2005 there was a work created by Government they wanted to repair this fort. When the laborers drilled the ground there was a few pots of gold. And now that gold is with Government."

When I asked Radha, what aspect of the fort she wanted to capture, she replied that this was a one of the most beautiful playground's for the  children. In her mind this mosque was actually a fort. 

Khirki Masjid, a structure that was originally built to house the quietude of prayer and ritualistic activities, has lost its religious sanctity. The dark corridors house alcoholic congregations and the musty domes have become the caves of thousands of bats. But according to Radha, it is a place of refuge for children girls and boy alike. The elders of the village occasionally visit this congregational space, but while I was there, I only saw creepy activities. 

Radha choreographed this shot. My job was to help her channel her writing in conjunction with the imagery. As opposed to the older kids, her visual conception needed work, based on her literal representation of the structure in her drawing on the concept sheet. Inspired by Jaswinder's idea of staging the children in the mosque, we tried a couple of shots. She learnt how to improvise the image, and progressively changed her frame to include the window in the back. 

Radha got her chance and we had to move on to the next campaign; Prakash's cut paste experiment. 

Andi was having a good time photographing too. 

Photo by Unknown Participant.

Owing to the short duration of the workshop, the concept sheets were very helpful for getting all the shots done. It was not necessary that the participant would shoot the picture for his or her own concept sheet. 

This image is taken by Rahul, because he was the only one there on Sunday morning and many Prakash and Radha had both drawn the facade of the mosque on their concept sheets.  

 We took many different angles, the lesson was to account for the lattoo which would later be photoshoped into the frame. 

Photos by Rahul

In the computer session, the kids played around with contrast and explored different fonts or what we called 'handwriting'. 

Art Director: Prakash & Sachin

Copywriter: Rahul & Sandeep Prakash

Contributions by Roshan Kumar, Arjun Sarkar, Siddharth Kumar, Pradeep Kumar, Sandeep Kumar, & Jaswinder

I was lucky to have Jaswinder as a student. On Saturday morning, when we got kicked out of the mosque, at this point most of the boys split to continue on with their vagabond activities. Jaswinder had by chance missed his bus to school, and was reprimanded by his mother, who told him not to return before school was over. 

And thus he is one of the major participants of Khoj Vigyapan Poster Workshop

  

Jaswinder took a very keen interest in photography. In the two days has captured some of the most well composed and thoughtful images.