While developing education programmes for learners we were pleased to find many familiar artworks from the DAG collection in the pages of the CBSE and West Bengal Board textbooks, though they were often grainy and hard to see clearly. We found that despite an exposure to a few examples of Indian art, students and often teachers did not have the tools to read these images or use them as a part of the learning process.

The question of why art should be used in classrooms, how it could transform the learning process, and what we could do to facilitate this change led us to develop the DAG Museums Education Programme last year, launching Art Lab at Indus Valley World School, Kolkata.

This time around the project would not only involve students and their parents, as with Art Lab, but would serve as an example of art-based learning for fifty teachers from the Kolkata Teachers' Centre network with whom we would be sharing the entire process. It would be an opportunity to draw from a year of programme development and demonstrate the methodology we had fine-tuned through workshops and projects with diverse learner groups and educators.

The one feedback we had received from the teachers we had worked with over the past year was that we needed to connect the learning modules we develop to the textbook, so that’s where we started. The interwoven stories of textiles, trade and freedom ties together the many stages of the freedom struggle and cuts across different chapters at learning levels, and so the story of the ‘Fabric of Freedom’ became the focal point for learning module and the final exhibition.

A charkha-like display was developed as the framework for the exhibition to evoke the theme. This would hold a collection of artworks from the DAG collection along with five textile scrolls created by students, that come together across the frame to represent the various strands of the freedom movement and the complex stories of textiles in the subcontinent. A map of colonial fabric trade routes, from India to the U. K., Africa and Japan would dot the floor as an interpretive layer, setting the broader historical context.

With the theme of fabric and freedom in mind we made a selection of artworks—from eighteenth century Company painting of silk weavers in Thanjavur to Abanindranath Tagore’s Bharat Mata from 1905 who carried a piece of cloth in her hand. Our work in museums and exhibitions with young people has shown us how looking closely at artworks and interpreting it can be a powerful way to introduce students to topics in their textbook, but more importantly can be an entry point into complex and difficult ideas that go beyond their prescribed syllabi. It can create a space for students to participate in the learning process, and develop their own perspective, while also allowing them to identify what they don’t know and ask critical questions to further their learning.

The artworks brought this rich museum experience into the classroom as we began the process of developing the exhibition together. Using prompts and thinking critical tools students began to confront these unfamiliar images, learning that they perhaps already know more about art than they give themselves credit for.

Students were asked to step into the lives of the individuals depicted in the artworks. One group was given Chittaprasad's scraper board drawing of the Santhal Rebellion and many identified with the male figure and imagined him as one of the Murmu brothers. Others were interested in the woman stooping over the dead figure of a man, and after doing a little research, they discovered the revolutionary Murmu brothers had two sisters Phulo and Jhano who also fought during the rebellion. Through the use of perspective-taking tools, they stepped into various different events and explored them in depth with liberty to create and experiment.

While studying history in school, students are often directed towards a single narrative. By engaging with the artworks and the varied perspectives they present, students had to try modes of learning that challenged the way knowledge is usually produced in their classrooms. They were encouraged to look at museum and gallery collections, newspaper archives, literature, music and films to develop a more granular reading of history, and understand that historical events continue to have effects on the present day.

Stepping into the shoes of researchers, artists and curators, students were introduced to the structure of the exhibition, the charkha frame, and their task at hand—working in five groups to create five textile scrolls, each depicting one strand of the freedom struggle. The characters from the paintings they had studied would come alive in these scrolls, each made with a different printing, stitching or dyeing technique.

Reflecting on the process of developing their characters, balancing fact and fiction, creating their storyboards and transferring their narratives onto the scrolls, students mentioned they enjoyed the freedom of shaping their own point of view on the past. They also appreciated having the liberty to fail. While working in groups, things were certainly not always peaceful and things did not go according to plan. While working with difficult processes like linocut, they struggled to get the paint on fast enough for the imprint to appear clearly on the fabrics, and amidst days of heavy rainfall, the group working with cyanotype had difficulty with calibrating the exposure and had to redo their scroll. However, they found ways to organize themselves and work through the challenges, and the small wins along the way propelled them towards completing their final projects.

On the opening day students presented the exhibition and their scrolls to their parents, teachers, and peers, and students from other schools and other classes visited the exhibition over the week. On the final day of the exhibition, we organised a workshop for the Teachers’ Center, with fifty educators coming in from twenty schools in the city. The workshop was conceptualized to equip teachers with tools they could use to integrate art at different stages of the learning process.

At the workshop the teachers were excited to consider the possibilities of this venture. One of the teachers said, ‘The fun-filled activities by the facilitator displayed techniques that teachers could use in the classroom which would help students to focus better and keep the students more attentive in the classroom.’ While this was certainly an important outcome, the workshop and the ‘Fabric of Freedom’ exhibition demonstrated how art could create learner-centric classroom, where students delve deeper into their prescribed syllabus, but ultimately go beyond the textbook, and develop the tools to drive their own learning.