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Arts & Education Program

PhotoKTM partners with Srijanalaya for each edition of the festival to design a robust Arts and Education program. We connect young people and educators with the primary exhibitions and programs hosted by the festival so that their visits can be immersive learning experiences. Using a variety of media and modalities, including guided tours, discussions, seminars and workshops, the Arts and Education program provides opportunities and encourages young people and educators to reflect on their own art practices and produce relevant work.

This year, the Arts and Education program is being designed as a response to the festival’s conceptual framework: to gather as a community and think about our roles in restoring voice and agency to non-humans; to rebuild relationships to land and place; to question how contemporary values might be failing us; to learn how to pay attention, give name, mourn loss, make place, relearn histories, see beyond; and to move towards a shared politics of mutualism, collaboration, justice and care.

A team of seven artists and educators are collaborating in order to interact with students, teachers and members of the civil society with these thematic strands, with the overarching goal of learning from each other and taking action. The program is designed to embody slow time – to begin before the festival, engage with the artworks in the exhibition spaces, and continue till July. In addition to facilitating 45-minute exercises and tours, interested groups will be invited to participate in long term projects that facilitate active listening, empathy, and critical thinking.

Check out some highlights from our Arts and Education programs from previous edition:

Arts and Education 2020

PhotoKTM5 Arts and Education Programs has been generously supported by PhotoSouthAsia, an initiative of the MurthyNAYAK Foundation.

Arts and Education Team

Chaaru Jain is an art history and nature enthusiast. Over the course of her undergraduate studies in Liberal Arts and Sciences, she was awarded a grant by the Leiden University Fund to conduct archival research at the Gurkha Museum in Winchester (2022). She is interested in themes of postcolonial representation, identity politics, oral history and indigenous knowledge.

Manantuna Jyapoo is an aspiring artist and an art educator. She recently completed a diploma on narrative practices from Narrative Practices India. She is a Social Work graduate from St. Xavier’s College and has completed a year long credit course in Fine Arts at Kathmandu University. She loves working with women and children and has been currently connecting with them through art education, working as an art facilitator at Srijanalaya.

Niranjan Kunwar’s practices connect the arts with pedagogy, literature, and queer issues. He has an MSEd from City University of New York with a specialisation in Childhood Education. He is the author of Nepal’s first queer memoir, Between Queens and the Cities (2020), and holds a diploma in Narrative Practices and Ideas.

Priyanka Singh Maharjan is a Kathmandu based visual artist and an art facilitator. She completed her Bachelor in Fine Arts degree from Kathmandu University, Centre for Art and Design in 2018. Her art practices are mostly focused on her past and re-interpretation of memories through diverse mediums. She is currently exploring giving visual structures to intangible but real elements of her past/memories through photographs, embroidery and pen works.

Sapana Sanjeevani is a Mithila Artist, Poet and Researcher. She is also the co-founder of PayalSapanapaints where she produces art as a resistance against discriminations based on gender, ethnicity, race and other patriarchal mindsets. She learnt Mithila art from her mother and has been involved in Mithila art since her childhood along with the women in Madheshi community.  She teaches Mithila art form to create spaces for conversation around Mithila oral histories with a feminist lens.

Sharareh Bajracharya is an art educator and one of the founding members of Srijanalaya. She looks for systemic ways for the arts to foster the curiosities and joy of young children, young adults, and communities around them. She also teaches at Kathmandu University Department of Art and Design and the School of Education and has edited/produced children’s books. An equal fascination with art management led her to be the Director of the nonprofit art exhibition Kathmandu Triennale 2077.

Sushma Maharjan is a hospitality management graduate working passionately in art education. She has been managing, coordinating and facilitating different creative projects at Srijanalaya since 2014. She has been actively involved in working closely with educators, artists, writers and diverse communities across Nepal. She has worked on transforming people’s stories into picture books, managing projects that work with teachers and students to bring the arts and intangible cultural heritage into the classroom, as well as education outreach programs for large scale nonprofit exhibitions such as Kathmandu Triennale and PhotoKTM.