IIT Kharagpur on Tuesday launched the Academy of Classical and Folk Arts on the occasion of their 70th Foundation Day through a webinar that saw the presence of Professor Virendra K Tewari, Director, IIT Kharagpur and Padma Bhushan Ajoy Chakrabarty, who is a visiting faculty at the varsity.
The Academy has been set up with the aim to nurture the innovation skills of IIT Kharagpur's students using India's cultural and creative heritage. "It aims to provide a platform for the IIT Kharagpur community to teach and learn various music and creative art forms, explore the scientific and cognitive principles of learning art forms and translate these principles into a unique pedagogy for learning science and technology. The teaching-learning processes of our traditional art forms are rooted in innovation, which enables, for example, a sitarist to render a raga in her own way without adherence to any preset notation. Such abilities, when cultivated over time, develop concentration and confidence, advanced left-brain right-brain coordination, and superior innovation skills, all of which are recipes for excellence in scientific creativity," said the IIT Kharagpur Director talking about how the academy is an important addition to the campus.
He added that the academy is aptly in line with the government's new National Education Policy wherein there is an emphasis on integrating arts and sciences for the holistic development of a student. "According to the policy document, there is to be no hard separation between the streams and also between sports, cultural and vocational crafts. This academy will help bolster this thought by enabling students from all sections and departments to come together and learn classical and folk art," said Prof Virendra K Tewari.
In the first phase, the academy will offer awareness programmes, which can be termed as micro-credit courses and opted by students from all the departments. Typically, the courses will be aligned with the institute's semester system. "We are yet to develop the type of courses, there will be numerous options with various durations. Our focus also will be on research to reinvigorate the practice of classical and folk arts through scientific innovations, ranging from the manufacturing of instruments to developing a modern pedagogy of teaching-learning programmes. We will also have outreach activities for participants all across the world through Massive Open Online Courses courses and live classes, with the goal of exposing them to the unique creative liberty and deep scientific foundations of Indian Classical Music," said Professor Pallab Dasgupta, Computer Science Engineering and also the man in charge of the academy.
Pt Ajoy Chakraborty congratulated IIT KGP for their newest addition to the campus, adding, "Any education is connected with the other just like scientific education is connected with music, humanities, history and more. Students will connect with their own minds, heart and thoughts with the help of these programmes or courses. Music too is scientifically and logically developed and students will be able to learn how technology can be connected with music and vice versa."
