Summer camps beckon students

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It’s vacations time! After a tense time preparing hard for the exams, it’s now time for students to chill and enjoy their vacations - not by just lazing around, but by making new friends and learning new things.

That’s where the summer camps come in! The city is filled with people conducting all kinds of summer camps. Different from the usual run-of-the-mill camps are the art galleries, which are roping in professionals from a variety of fields to impart knowledge to students.

Gone are the days when summer camps were restricted to dancing, painting and drawing. Now, it’s all about learning how to model clay, make masks out of papier mache, and create beautiful handmade cards using the linocut printmaking technique.

Ilango’s Art Space is conducting a Summer Art Blast that offers children all the above activities. Technical director Aishwarya Manivannan is convinced about the need for such camps. “The education system produces many followers, but we are trying to create leaders through such camps.

Every summer, we get parents and children who are very aware of the innovative-creative developments around us and what better way to address their needs than collaboration with professionals who could impart the knowledge to students attending such camps,” smiles Aishwarya.

Besides bringing in experts to impart knowledge, Art and Soul is striving to provide an experience-of-a-lifetime to their campers. Co-founder Devi Priya explains, “With our workshops, kids get to explore new things.

Our campers get to learn a new technique everyday and because the child is exposed to so much, parents get to understand their child’s passion and so, it becomes easier to let them pursue it.” However, with a large number of kids participating in these camps, is it possible to ensure that all of them are handled correctly?

Aishwarya clears the air and adds, “We work on a one-to-one basis, where every child is given equal attention. And because we have a mixture of age groups, the children come out of their comfort zones and interact with new people.

” M. Bhavesh, a father of two, seconds the thought. “Such camps provide an opportunity to our children to do something productive. In the process, they learn so many things, make friends and develop their skills. This year too, I will be sending my sons to one such camp, where they will get to explore their creative side.”