A storytelling session is about to commence at Bengaluru’s Buguri Community Library in Banashankari, a space created by the not-for-profit Hasiru Dala for the children of waste pickers and waste workers. Around 20 bright-eyed children, ages five to mid-teens, sit cross-legged on a jamakkalam, giggling and chatting among themselves while Gomathi J, Pushpalatha S, and Lathasha, all associated with this library, flit around the cheery mural-and-book-filled room, preparing for this session.
Gomathi begins with an icebreaker, asking all participants to close their eyes and listen as the other two facilitators introduce various sounds: a squeak, a bird’s chirp, clapping hands, and stomping feet. “Can you identify these?” she asks, with a smile, as a stream of enthusiastic responses comes in. This is followed by a dramatised story about Chintu, a little boy with musical abilities, which ends with an interactive session with the children.
“Through storytelling, we can explore so many things: creativity, music, theatre,” explains Pushpalatha S, who believes that children enjoy a good story, especially one buoyed by all these various elements. “These children are passionate about music, which is why we picked up this story,” agrees Lathasha.
At the storytelling session at the Buguri Community Library in Banashankari
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement
The importance of play
This storytelling session is part of a city-wide movement to reclaim childhood by Bachpan Manao, an EkStep Foundation initiative titled BM in a Box. According to Deepika Mogilishetty, Chief of Policy and Partnerships, EkStep Foundation, Bachpan Manao was started over two years ago, as a “collective creative articulation of the idea of bringing attention to the first eight years of childhood, a unique window of opportunity for every child.”
During this phase of life, learning and living are the same for children, Deepika says, because their brains are developing at a rapid pace. She adds that it is important to ensure that children get to experience the elements of joy, curiosity and wonder in this critical period of growth and development, regardless of the child’s background, something Bachpan Manao and its collab-actors from across the country strive to do “If, as caring adults, we don’t fuel it with nurturing environments, we are shortchanging our youngest.”
Play is an essential activity for children to explore these feelings and emotions. Play should be abundant in childhood – something that happens “in exploration, storytelling, running, climbing, imagining, and reading and even when children are doing nothing,” says Deepika.
In an effort to ensure support structures that enable play, Bachpan Manao seeks to create more child-friendly, welcoming early childhood care spaces. “Bachpan Manao’s 100-plus collab-actors are part of this conversation, and they seek to do this in their own way,” she says, pointing out that a range of events, both online and in-person have been organised across the country, which celebrate and make visible early childhood, “in our homes, in our conversations, in our anganwadis, kindergartens, schools, parks, libraries and in other public spaces.”
Play happens in multiple ways, including exploration, storytelling, running, climbing, imagining, and reading
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Special Arrangement
A collaborative effort
BM in a Box emerged out of a collaboration between Bachpan Manao and Makkala Hubba, which is part of the upcoming BLR Hubba, a Bengaluru-based arts and culture festival, which will be held in the city between January 16 and 25.
Bhawna Jaimini, the curator of Makkala Hubba, described in the BLR Hubba website as “a sensorial world in the heart of Freedom Park that restores wonder, play, and discovery”, expands on the reason behind it.
“There are fewer and fewer spaces in cities for children to explore beyond the confines of their homes and schools,” she says. And while Bengaluru is no exception, it does have an extensive network of parks and open spaces, which its citizens continue to occupy and reclaim imaginatively.
“Makkala Hubba is another way of reclaiming the city for childhood in creative, joyful ways, where artists, educators, and creative practitioners lead the way in making Bengaluru the city of, by, and for children,” says Bhawna.
Makkala Hubba with Bachpan Manao transforms Bengaluru’s Freedom Park’s historic grounds into a landscape of curiosity, connection, and wonder, where “learning doesn’t happen in rows of desks but through touch, sound, movement, storytelling and quiet time”.
In the process of this co-creation between Makkala Hubba and Bachpan Manao, another idea emerged, says Deepika. While looking at what would be presented through the lens of play and learning at Makkala Hubba to make it inviting to younger children, they also began to explore ways to create something that could happen in any space in the city.
An installation from Makkala Hubba, Nose Squats
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Special Arrangement
“This is not just about one event or one park. It’s about fundamentally reimagining Bengaluru as a city that prioritises its youngest residents, where every neighbourhood has safe spaces for play, where we invest in our anganwadis and libraries, where public planning considers children, and where childhood is not just protected but actively celebrated and eventually becomes a national conversation and movement,” she says
Creating more child-friendly spaces
This led them to conceptualise the BM in a Box toolkit, a “metaphorical box” that offers ways to bring early childhood to life across various spaces and communities. This co-created digital playbook, available for download from the Bachpan Manao website, offers resources to help anyone host a BM in a Box event.
These include a simple guide, eight childhood themes such as play, social bonding, nature and stories, over 32 activity ideas—including lagori, pictionary, sock puppets, scavenger hunts, clowning and story circles, to further explore these themes, a directory of artists, storytellers, musicians, and resource persons, printable décor, materials, and giveaways to make spaces vibrant and pointers to ensure safety, inclusion, and care for every child.
“BM in a Box is an invitation to anyone, saying that – here are a few ways of bringing childhood alive in your community and neighbourhood,” says Deepika, who sees it as a way of empowering communities across Bengaluru to create space for and celebrate childhood in their own neighbourhoods.
Buguri Library’s Lathasha agrees saying, creating spaces like this enables children to open up and express themselves more fully. “Many of the children here face social challenges in their everyday life, and don’t have a platform to express themselves.”
These activities, she feels, also offer them an opportunity to talk about their suppressed thoughts and feelings. “When Pushpa does read aloud, for instance, children say that this happened to me that day. And when we assign tasks like writing to them, they do it beautifully,” says Lathasha, who says creating safe spaces for children to be themselves is extremely important.
The BM in a box toolkit can be downloaded at the bachpanmanao.org/playground_bm/bm-in-a-box-a-series-of-micro-events-celebrating-childhood