Activities within the grant:
The grant would support IDC to initiate a series of activities that are aimed at enriching the communication material for children – ranging from books, educational video, animation and interactive learning material, which can also be used for children with special needs.

The project focuses on:

	Conceiving new directions and creation of material by bringing together educators, writers, artists, animators, programmers and publishers
	Engaging with traditional visual art practices and practitioners through artist residencies and student projects
	Developing and sharing design strategies to enrich and enlarge the availability of children’s books in Indian languages
	Research and education through workshops and seminars that would bring educationists, artists, writers, and publishers on the same platform
	Creating and deepening the link between a design institute and production of learning material for children.

The project is expected to result into:

	Adapting ‘talking book technology’ for language teaching-learning through initial piloting of 500 books that would demonstrate potential of a new technology for innovative children’s books and find mainstream champions for its scaling up
	Developing a set of three handcrafted books in collaboration with traditional visual artists, setting new benchmarks for quality of production, content and art work
	Developing three animated stories and illustrated books, based on stories written by children, to demonstrate the power of material created by them
	Offering campus residencies to two artists / illustrators / designers that would provide live interface for IDC students with practising artists and result in development of innovative material that would be published / produced by publishers / Parag partners
	Organising a two-week workshop for creators of children’s material from the SAARC region and an international seminar and exhibition on designing for children for creating a platform for developing and sharing leading and innovative ideas and disseminating the proceedings to a wider audience
	Through seed support, developing three IDC student projects on creating learning material for children, thereby encouraging the IDC student fraternity to engage with the field of design for children and nurturing young talent.