The act of gathering may not be a solely human enterprise, birds species across the world have been documented to build eclectic collections of rocks, pebbles and flowers to impress their mates. While squirrels are well known for their gleaning prowess, stashing voluminous amounts of nuts and seeds to last them well beyond the winter, less should be said about their ability to accurately locate their treasure. Though humans too collect to impress and accumulate rare treasures, it’s the stories and histories that flow out from them that are truly intriguing.
One can go so far as to say, any passion project is a collection of knowledge, skill and the know how associated with it. But must one? Well, for the Shipra and Aarini English programme that is exactly what we set out to do. The collections that the children built over the summer became the medium through which to explore deeper questions pertaining the act of gathering, whilst building language and writing skills. Some driving questions that we kept returning to were ‘How can a collection expand that goes beyond quantitative growth?’, ‘Is a collection something “I” possess?’, ‘Do stories emerge from how we organise objects?’
These questions nudged some children to start exploring outside their collections. Research and reading from library books on histories of objects, their mechanics and biology became a primary source of information. Scanning articles, making notes, drawings and illustrations were some of the new skills that naturally became essential things to develop via this project.
A trip to MAP (Museum of Art and Photography) was a turning point in the project. It added to the children’s understanding on how collections can be curated, shared and displayed in ways that the objects themselves become the storytellers.
The learnings from the museum visit, collating data, preparing displays and immersive experiences coalesced into the final exhibition where the core starting point remained the collections, from which varied branches spread out bringing to light a plethora stories, histories, observations about equally eclectic collections of shells, bread, wine, money, packaging, borders, birds and flowers.
