By Srishti TV:
“The only words that pop up in people’s mind when you talk about design is fashion. But design is everywhere today. So, people need to know about the financial viability of art & design today, to be able to see it as an industry, which it is because it does generate income,” said Anukool Raman, a student of Srishti School of Art and Design.
So, while most thesis projects require students to write thousands of words to explain a complicated topic, to clear the air around misconceptions about art and design, Anukool along with 13 students of SSAD created a Youtube channel called Srishti TV!
The team comprises of students pursuing multidisciplinary courses ranging from contemporary art practices to film, branding, and animation. All of them brought their own skills to the table which eventually led to the creation of the Youtube channel. In four months, the team created nine segments that come together to form a 40-minute episode that was released on Youtube.
Along with the episodes, they have also created a website, and a magazine collateral, ‘Uploads’ which takes the viewer/reader through the back stories and an in depth conceptualisation of our segments per episode.
The idea was conceived by the project’s mentor, Niret Alva, and catalysed by Srishti’s Founder Director, Geetha Narayanan. Nidhi Kulkarni, production head of the channel’s episode “My Best Friend, Art”, said, “Our facilitator wanted to give us all the control of the project – from figuring out the structure of the course to what all content we want to produce.”
Since the project was aimed to give them an industry like exposure, from production to marketing, students did all of it by themselves and learnt more about their field than they ever could in a conventional classroom.
For instance, the project gave Raman hands on experience of how sound is used in videos. He said, “At the beginning I was really thinking of making structured music – spend time with it and come up with something concrete. But then later as the project kept moving ahead I realised the music had to be simple. The sound in the video must complement the video and not overpower it.”
“We learn more through exploring, experimenting and messing up, ” explained Kulkarni. The team faced many challenges while setting up Srishti TV, especially since the project was meant to be a real world workspace simulation. Working in a team, facing difficult deadlines, figuring out how well the content will do on Youtube, budgets, marketing, etc. were things that they too had to figure out from scratch.
At Srishti, creative freedom isn’t limited to the thesis project as students don’t follow a conventional curriculum and have the freedom to learn whatever it is that they want to. After a billion ups and downs, many more reshoots and several feedback sessions, Srishti TV now has a three-day long exhibition from July 17, 2017 – July 20, 2017, which will showcase the project in college.
“Design colleges have been a mysterious zone for a long time. We had a common goal – to make the channel a representation of us, artists and designers,” said Atreyo Mitra, the writer for one of the episodes. Srishti TV! not only informs people about the work of an artist or a designer but also attempts to attract people to creative fields. Check it out here!