With these beautiful thoughts in mind, team Why Waste? in collaboration with Piece of Paper Productions and The Bisibelebois, conducted another Hopeschooling episode. The webinar was centred around the theme of Combating Climate Change- An Artist’s Outlook. Consisting of talented artists in their own sphere, Shruti Parthasarathy – writer, director, photographer – Piece of Paper Productions; Avinash Ratnam, Vishnu R and Vaishakh Dutt – popularly known as The Bisibelebois, and moderator Richa, Chief Marketing Officer of Why Waste? tried to exchanged their varying views on how small initiatives taken up by the artists can have a positive impact on us.
The webinar started off with Shruti enlightening us about her three pieces of work which was written in a very beguiled debonaire manner and conveyed her strong message which was followed up by a hilarious yet firm impromptu enacted by The Bisibelebois which stressed upon the drastic changes taking place due to the sudden transition in the climate and how we human beings have contributed to the catastrophic development taking place on our planet and also cited few instances through their hilarious acts. It was later on followed up by the final open-ended discussion on few powerful yet thoughtful questions put up by Richa in which the first question was regarding their first ever experience of
climate change and how it had a profound effect on their lives to which all of them somewhat shared a mutual experience like extremities in temperatures, melting of glaciers, sudden rise in the sea level and also the unexpected heavy rainfalls in dry and arid regions causing floods and landslides resulting in immense loss of human lives and biodiversity . They also shared their small ways or methods which they tried like resorting to the use of jute bags, car-pooling, reduced usage of plastics and it had a huge impact on their lives and contributed to the well being of our Mother Earth.The following question’s cynosure was about how positive words put up by the artists or through their visual arts have an imapact on us especially during the pandemic to which Vaishakh Dutt nodded and also shared that how through his small plays and imrpromptu he tries to bring out positivity and smiles on people and that the small intiatives put forward by the artist can divert our minds from all the negativity that has surmounted our whole planet and to provide us
with momentarily pleasures ie: songs, movies etc. they also tried to made us understand that it’s not only important to know about your surroundings but also to acknowledge it and understand the grave matter and ponder out solutions which we can apply in our lives.
During the ongoing discussion a very thoughtful question was put up by one of the audience members Jay Smruti, who is also the co-founder of Piece of Paper Productions on how the electromagnetic waves contributes to the climate change and asked to exchange their thoughts over it to which all of them mutually agreed that these harmful waves have had affected the bird immigration pattern and also the large network towers put up by the power hungry companies have intercepted the natural magnetic wave, it is so ironic that although these technologies are driving us (human beings) closer but only at the cost of lives of those artless creatures. The meeting concluded with the very last question which was subjective – how are they surviving this quarantine phase and also to suggest few things which we could productively apply in our daily lives, the conclusion deduced from their answers was to utilise this crucial time effectively and also to venture out to find out your ownself. Through this webinar we gauged that how our actions impact our surroundings and how artists use their stage to not only showcase their talent but to bring out the positivity in their audience.
This article was written for Why Waste? by Saarim Khursheed, a driven and enthusiastic individual who often contributes to Why Waste?’s activities.
This episode of Hopeschooling, can be found on our YouTube channel, by clicking here.
To contact the artists present in this epsiode, click on the hyperlinks embedded in the introduction at the top of the article to be directed to their social media.
