Australian artist Michael Camileri and Bookaroo in the City visited Bihar to add more color to it. Their adventure in the city started with 44 children in the Parivartan, an Integrated Rural Development Initiative campus in Narendrapur, Siwan district. He started the session by asking the students what they liked to draw and they happily showcased their work. He then introduced them to doodling and they all put their imagination together to create a city of their dreams. A giant chart paper came alive with doodles of a flying mansion, colorful creatures from the wildest of imaginations. The best part about the session was that it gave each student a chance to put their imagination to play. The final piece of art has a little bit of each of them.
The next day, Michael and Bookaroo visited Bhatkan village. He painted one of the walls in the village with the portrait of the girl who lives there. The village dwellers were overwhelmed by the gesture. In his next session with the students of Parivartan, Michael showed them how comic books are created. He gave them situation and asked them to draw their own versions of the episode. The results were surprising and funny.
On his final day in Bihar, Camileri painted a wall in Shaheed Umakant Senior Secondary School in Siwan. He divided the students into groups of three; each group got a sheet of paper which was further divided into three, one for each member of the group. Each student was told to make one third of the body, either the face or the legs or the middle. The condition was that they had to hide their drawings from each other. When everyone was done, Michael put the three pieces together and put all the drawing on display for everyone to see. The result was hilarious but very creative.
