Active Strokes

Paint with passion, sing with abandon, put up your best act…it’s a place where children can explore their creativity without any inhibitions or rules. Now open to school students, street and underprivileged children, the Outreach Activity Centre at Leisure Valley, which was inaugurated recently, had its first painting workshop, which saw budding artists of Shivalik Public School and Shishu Niketan paint different strokes. It was a special moment, smiles PC Sharma of the Government Museum and Art Gallery and also in charge of the Centre, who’s chalked out a creative schedule for the Centre. “The idea here is to have some artistic activity on a daily basis and we aim to identify young artists, besides providing them a platform to showcase their talent,” the idea also includes selection of the best child artists from schools and a best child artist award too, with a proposal of exhibiting these works at the proposed National Children’s Museum. A panel of judges, eminent artists from the city will select the works for the awards. Music classes, science projects, art works related to diverse topics related to environment, society and theatre activities are also on the agenda. “This room was lying vacant and we thought it would be an ideal place for children to start their activities,” also in the pipeline is a butterfly museum and later a butterfly park. Various specimens of butterflies from all over India will be on display to create awareness on the wonders of nature, creating a scientific attitude and a sense of curiosity, especially among students.