Milestones, Updates & Invitations from Sankalpa:
• 3,000 people of all ages and backgrounds have created with us at the Art Cart in the last year! Through community outreach, we have been weaving groups together at various events, facilitating cross-cultural connection through original self-expression. On December 19th, we celebrated this joy and color-filled year at the Youth Center fair!
• We hosted 6 graduate students from the School of Visual Arts (NYC) for an intensive credit course in Multicultural Issues in Art Therapy in August. The students learned traditional art forms from local women while processing issues of hierarchy, race, and privilege. Our culminating exhibition of mandalas, henna, embroidery and kolam traveled to NYC in October, as part of a developing bridge between NYC and Auroville through art therapy.
• Sankalpa founder, art therapist and Aurovilian, Krupa, traveled to Hong Kong and the US in October for a month of presentations, workshops and exhibitions. The work here has been received with great interest and support internationally!
• Our art center dome in the International Zone sustained termite and wind damage, so we studied the extreme climate, adapting to it with a dismountable secondary roof structure skillfully designed by Peter Anderschitz to be installed in the next weeks by Aureka. Funded by a successful crowdfunding campaign by 50 donors in 10 countries.
• Temporary roof used to host several events including a Holi celebration, book launch for Yaroslava’s Flowers by Noel Parent, puja and planting of intention trees with SVA students.
• While waiting to use this space, we continue to collaborate with various existing spaces in/around Auroville including: Vérité, Unity Pavilion, Pavilion of Tibetan Culture, Visitor’s Center, Kala Kendra, YouthLink, The Learning Community, Life Education Center, Thamarai, EcoFemme, Wellpaper, Upasana, Deepam, and Youth Center, among others!
• International collaborations with Art Therapy without Borders, International Art Therapy Organization, International Expressive Art Therapy Association, School of Visual Arts NYC, MindVISA youth exchange programs.
• Hosting long-term volunteers from India, France, Hungary, Israel, Germany, US.
Photos and other highlights in our global newsletter.
Upcoming events at Sankalpa (on right side just after Pavilion of Tibetan Culture, flyers below):
Wednesday, December 30th at 3:30 pm: A mandala circle garden experiment at Sankalpa in collaboration with Krishna at Solitude – all are welcome to remember and reconnect to the earth through permaculture and art!
Saturday, January 2 from 8 to 9 am: A simple mandala ceremony, where all are welcome to bring and add natural materials to a design on the earth and share an intention (sankalpa) for the new year.
February 19-21, 2016: We are organizing an Expressive Arts Therapies Symposium in collaboration with Prasad Family Foundation (US). This unique experiential-based gathering will be for limited participants, including a panel and workshops with 6 facilitators (3 from US, 3 local) and community art exchange. Teachers, parents or anyone else interested to integrate tools of the expressive therapies in their work are encouraged to apply here (also on Auronet): http://bit.ly/1HOMRDc
Happy Holidays to all!
– Krupa and Iyyappan J. for Sankalpa: Art Journeys, a subunit of Thamarai
www.sankalpajourneys.com, facebook.com/sankalpajourneys, sankalpa.art@gmail.com
