Aina Arts

Sobre nosotros

Aina Arts is a not-for-profit organization whose aim is to provide the benefits of an arts education by promoting the use of local art forms, materials and methods with children in marginalized communities globally. In a rapidly interconnecting world, cultures run the risk of being subsumed by a dominant culture. They seek to promote local art forms through work with young people around the world, bringing together communities, using the arts to converse, and valuing the unique ideas behind all forms of artistic representation.

Its mission is:

Observe: Go out into the surrounding environment, into the homes, businesses, temples and ceremonies of the environment and look for objects of art using art's broadest definition. Pay particular attention to the materials used. If possible, understand the intended meanings that these forms of creation contain.

Provide: In the class room or with an outside group of kids, bring the materials you have observed to them, the processes you have witnessed and the meanings you have gleaned. Let the kids interpret the materials as they will; your job is to find them, not to dictate how they are used (unless the work is egregiously sloppy and careless)

Learn: The differences between the forms produced traditionally and by the kids speaks volumes to the world-view of the children, and the shifting values and mores of a society. When comparing the intended meanings one observed or researched and the meanings created by the children, one catches a glimpse into changing aesthetic traditions, to reinterpretations, and to rediscoveries of a mutable cultural heritage.

Amar C. Bakshi: Social Studies & Visual & Environmental Studies joint concentrator at Harvard University from Washington DC.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, deliver a lecture, procure an expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.