On 23 August, as we celebrated in unison ISRO’s successful landing of Chandrayaan-3 mission's Lander Module on the Moon's surface, we also rejoiced in the shared sentiment within the Krea community on scientific curiosity, the spirit of enquiry and the urge to keep generating solutions for everyday problems, something the faculty members inculcate within the students at Krea, each day, every day.

The week that passed and the events lined up for the upcoming week are in a way an ode to our everyday mission, to fetch ideas from where disciplines criss-cross, to engage in discourses that create curiosity, to cultivate a collective sense of cheer in our cultural diversity and explore narratives that will be building blocks of our future.

Learnings from the past to lessons of the future definitely fit the theme for the week. Prof S Sivakumar penned a brilliant article in The Hindu on the future of computing, Dr Srajana Kaikini’s class deep-dived into learning chapters in the Global Arts through an exploratory field trip, IFMR Graduate School of Business (GSB) continued with sessions helping students gear up for the workspace, The Office of Inclusive Learning Support (ILS) announced the return of the Filter Coffee, Unfiltered Conversations to aid students in their transition from school to University and Krea-CWP continued to bridge gaps with the launch of the brilliant Conversation Partner Programme.

Faculty members continued to pen chapters in research and work for causes and initiatives that matter to the world of today. This week, IFMR GSB’s Junior Student Council Members also made their way into institution building. Building on the sparkling yesteryear chapter of Podipooram 2k22, students are gearing up for Aaravam ‘23, knitting the Krea community together in grand Onam festivities, while TedX Krea University’s first edition also is slated for kickoff real soon. Gender 360°, the much-awaited three-day multimedia festival on the campus is also round the corner.  And last but not the least, the upcoming week will see a powerful panel discussion that will look at arts enabling pathways to reflect on and respond to nature, culture and the self, in this changing world, through the lens of renowned artistes and art academics. 

Read on for all this and much more, in the segments below. Here’s to raising a toast to curiosity, collaborations, creation, collective, and camaraderie, strands that weave through the tapestry that’s the Krea community.

This week in Committees in Centrestage, we bring to you the Placements Committee at IFMR GSB, a student body responsible for carrying out all placements-related activities. PlaceCom is a team of highly motivated students (selected after nine rounds of various interviews), mentored by the Corporate Relations and Career Services (CRCS) Team. The Committee aims to bridge the gap between the students and the potential employers by organising guest lectures, providing training and counselling sessions, and maintaining the long-term relationship with the recruiters.

On Krea’s social media platforms, in the coming week, we will give you a glimpse of the significant work done by the Placements Committee over the recent months.

In honour of Dr S R Ranganathan, considered the father of Library Science in India, the Krea library celebrated the Librarian Day on 12 Aug 2023. On the occasion, the library invited students of Krea to share their thoughts about the library and its impact on their learning journey.

IFMR GSB is the Technical Partner of the 7th Edition of CII South Region Young HR Managers Competition. The competition aims to encourage and motivate young HR professionals across the southern region to showcase their contributions at work, which have clearly impacted the business performance of their enterprise.  The last date for submission is 9 September 2023.

The Conversation Partner Programme was initiated to facilitate a safe space for first-year Writing and Oral Communication (WOC) students to practice listening and speaking in English without the fear of judgment. Second and third-year SIAS students will volunteer for the programme and are trained to offer oral conversation support. The programme is open to all students and staff members at Krea University. As far as possible, the team will customise the practice sessions to the needs of staff members and students from School of Interwoven Arts and Sciences (SIAS) and IFMR Graduate School of Business (GSB). 

This programme aims to help develop confidence toward fluency in spoken English. Assigned participants are expected to meet their conversation partner for an hour every week. A conversation partner is not a grammar teacher or peer tutor. Thus, conversation partners are trained to refrain from correcting participants’ grammar or accent, or offering subject-specific tutoring support to student participants. If you are interested in availing this support, please contact the Programme Coordinator Sayantan Datta [sayantan.datta@krea.edu.in].

The panelists include Alarmel Valli, Padma Bhushan Awardee and Bharatanatyam artiste, Anthony Bowne, Principal and CEO, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Dr Sumitra Ranganathan, Associate Professor of Music, Global Arts, SIAS and Dr Swarnamalya Ganesh, dance artiste and Assistant Professor of Practice, Global Arts, SIAS. The session will be moderated by Akhila Krishnamurthy, Director, Communications, Krea University.

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LEAD at Krea University is organising a three-day multimedia festival to encourage a discourse on gender, power, and identity in the South Asian context. Through the medium of documentary films, exhibitions and conversations with experts, the festival will provide a space for critical thinking and ongoing debate around these issues, and seek youth perspectives. 

Films and visual media are a connecting thread in understanding the everyday constructions of gender in South Asia, and their continuities and discontinuities across regions. The festival will also provide a space to explore these dimensions through the lens of technology, and how our evolving relationship with technology influences equity, inclusion and safety in an increasingly ‘phygital’ world. 

Add a touch of peer pressure to this, and the transition only seems to get more difficult. The conversations focussed on how the members could support each other through this difficult transition. Students joined in for unfiltered conversations and freshly-brewed filter coffee, courtesy of Narasimhulu’s Cafe on 22 August 2023.

On 19 August 2023, the students of SIAS, Concepts in Aesthetics II that is offered by Dr Srajana Kaikini to students of Global Arts, Philosophy and Literature, visited the exhibition Visible/Invisible at the Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore. They engaged with the curator Dr Arnika Ahldag around the ideas and the works at the museum through the lens of gender, its social life, its conceptual ironies and the possibilities and impossibilities of representation in relation to the tasks of the artist/curators. 

The students are engaging in critical art theory including writings of Groys, Asta, Ranciere and Griselda Pollock and others and this field visit gave them an opportunity to blend their thinking with practice. Dr Kaikini is Assistant Professor of Philosophy, SIAS.

Using the lens of Sickness Insurance as a form of labour regulation, the paper examines the politics located in questions of protectionism, social reproduction of the workforce and power struggles. While the dominant struggle is between labour and capitalists, the paper examines other struggles and differing actors. These include commercial rivalries between capitalists at a national and a global level, struggles between reformist intellectuals and the colonial state; as well as struggles between Bombay capitalists and the colonial state.

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On social media, throughout next week, hear the stories from the newest members of the Krea family, the freshers of the undergraduate cohort. From navigating campus life to immersing themselves in inspiring classes, the Kreators share their stories of growth, passion, and new beginnings.

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Krea University is serious in its commitment to mental well-being on campus, each day, everyday. Watch this interview with our In-house Counsellor, Aparna Raghavan, a counseling psychologist, behaviour therapist, and researcher, who brings a wealth of knowledge gained from both teaching and practicing Psychology.

In this video, Aparna shares her valuable insights on the crucial role of a mental health counsellor within educational institutions, her vision for Krea, and the importance of Queer Affirmative Therapy. She also touches upon the evolving perspective on mental health among today's youth, strategies to foster inclusivity on campus and the recognising the efforts of mental health advocates and their impact within the university community.

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TEDX KREA University 2023 is coming soon, on 17 September 2023. TEDx Krea University is the first independently organised TEDx event being hosted by Krea University and entails talks by experts, discussions, sale of merchandise and more. Led by students, the theme of the event is denting the universe, which serves as a metaphorical representation of the  collective ability to create significant, lasting change.

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Anil Srinivasan, renowned pianist and Visiting Professor of Practice, Literature & the Arts, SIAS joined by bassist Naveen Napier, percussionist Krishna Kishor, and award-winning vocalist Sai Vignesh, conducted a blindfolded performance. The music concert was held in Hyderabad  on 24 August 2023 and was organised by IC3 Institute, aimed at contributing towards counselling for children.

If you have time this weekend, please do check these productions and publications from the recent past, give them a listen, watch or read.