Art, Arattai, Aarpattam

Festival Highlights

Art, Arattai, Aarpattam
November 1 – 20, 2009

NalandaWay’s ‘Art, Arattai, Aarpattam’ is a platform for children, families, teachers and other individuals to come together and experience art, to experiment, to challenge, to inspire and be inspired and to have fun.

UNICEF’s ‘State of the world’s children 2009’ report paints a horrifying picture of the plight of the girl child in India. Female foeticide, child marriage, lack of education and poor sanitary conditions are but a few of the evils that plague the female child population. To take a step forward in changing this dismal situation, NalandaWay has adopted the theme ‘Girls are Superstars’ for the year of 2009.

The Campaign
A partnership between UNICEF and NalandaWay, this campaign seeks to create a groundswell of information messages and engagement to bring up this issue; and reposition attitude and perception using a popular media initiative surrounded by key debates focused at various key players.

‘Art, Arattai, Aarpattam’ would be the grass roots communication campaign that surrounds this media initiative which will take the form of a series of episodes on a mainstream Tamil television channel focused on the issues of girl children.

Campaign highlights

1. 20 days of street theatre, films, dance, music and arts for children, youth and adults.
2. Concerts and musical productions by renowned national and international artists.
3. Over 320 performances in 100 locations across the 5 cities in the state
4. Competitions for children in over 2700 towns and villages
5. International Children Film Festival with films for children from around the world
6. “At your doorstep” – films screening and street theatre festivities directly at parks, community centres, schools,
colleges in the 5 major cities in Tamilnadu.
7. 12 half hour special serial on Star Vijay from the 2nd to 19th of November, directed by famous Tamil directors, focusing on issues relating to the gender challenge.
8. Grand finale on the 20th of November to mark the 20th anniversary of the ‘Child Rights Convention’ .

This year, through ‘Art, Arattai, Aarpattam’ , we hope to successfully achieve our twin objectives being –
1. To ensure that marginalised and excluded children have adequate opportunities to express their ideas, challenges and opinions.
2. Advocacy on the importance of Child Rights to schools, parents, teachers, media and opinion leaders.


For more details - http://www.nalandaway.org/aaa/index.html