Kokuyo Camlin Ltd, the premier stationery brand, in partnership with Indian Art and Design Educators Associations (IADEA) presented ‘2019 Camlin Art Teacher Excellence Awards’ at IADEA’s second annual conference at India International Centre (IIC) in New Delhi. The theme of the two-day conference was Art Integrated Learning – a cross disciplinary approach to learning art where art is seen as a facilitator for overall learning. 

The Camlin Art Teacher Excellence Award was formed to honor and recognize the creative efforts of the Art teachers and enthusiasts. The participants were reviewed and chosen to be winners by an independent panel of well-known art experts. The seven pre-decided categories from which the winners and runner up were selected for the award are Innovation in the Art Room, Best use of Elements of Art, Promoting Artistic Process, Collaboration in the Art Room, Art Teaching Techniques, Instilling Creative Confidence & Art Projects for Children with Special Needs. 

The theme of the conference was created specifically to bring together stakeholders from across the education and art ecosystem who are passionate about making art an important learning tool in school based education to facilitate lateral thinking, process orientation, problem solving, risk taking and individual creativity thereby fostering key life-skills that are essential for survival in the modern world. The two-day conference included workshops and seminars and was attended by 150 teachers, art educators from 28 cities across India and 12 non-profits working in the art and education domains from across the country as well as a few keynote international speakers. Both global and national experts from the art and education world shared their views and experiential learning on Art Integrated Learning highlighting the need for equal partnerships in teaching and learning rather than a top down didactical approach.

Announcing the workshop, Sara Vetteth, Founder IADEA said, “Art Integrated Learning is a highly acclaimed and holistic model of teaching-learning that integrates art with the mainstream school curriculum to helps educators and teachers create a better classroom environment and improve both teaching and learning standards. How does art relate to language, science and maths? We want to change the way art is perceived and introduce the idea of art as a facilitator for cross disciplinary thought and learning. It is a great way to teach life skills, risk-taking, process oriented and design thinking. I am delighted to see so many participants that are eagerly learning and sharing their own experiences. We hope some of our ideas manage to influence inclusive and integrated teaching-learning methods in the future.” 

The event concluded with the much awaited 2019 Camlin Art Teacher Excellence Awards that celebrated the inventiveness, creativity, and passion of art teachers. The award-winning projects are now online as resource material for all teachers to refer to and use. 

The 7 award categories that included both a winner and runner-up were: 

• Art for Social Change Winner – Diana Sathish, KC High International School, Chennai Runner up – Amrutha Anand, ApL Global School, Chennai 
• Art Teaching Techniques Winner – Pragati Pramod, Somaiya School, Mumbai Runner Up – Amal Krishna Paul, Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad 
• Best Use of Elements of Art Winner – Amrutha Anand, ApL Global School, Chennai Runner up – Vidhi Sharma, Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad 
• Collaboration in the Art Room Winner – Ashwini Rajeev Rudrakshi, The Orchid School, Baner, Pune Runner Up – Raghunath Jena, VidhyaGyan School, Noida 
• Innovation in the Art Room Winner – Amala Aiana, Deepa Shankar and Nivedha Leoni, Sishya School, Chennai Runner up – Rajashree Gupta, Kiran Nadar Museum, Delhi 
• Instilling Creative Confidence Winner – Manisha Lal, Shiv Nadar School, Gurugram Runner up – Mandakini Mathur, Devrai Art Village, Pachgani 
• Promoting Artistic Process Winner – Vidhi Sharma, Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad Runner up – Pankaj Patil, Somaiya School, Mumbai 

A special award ‘Teacher of the Year Award’ was awarded to Vidhi Sharma, Shiv Nadar School, Faridabad.

The annual conference was an initiative of the RainbowFish Education Trust and its key partners were Sundaram Finance as Patron and Camlin as Awards Partner along with support by the India International Centre (IIC).