Making Learning Fun: Account of Children Literature Festival

Qurat-ul-ain Haider Zai­di

It start­ed with a bang and a cheer­ful children’s anthem Humain Kitab Chahiye and end­ed with the joy­ful prize and award dis­tri­b­u­tion among the dif­fer­ent schools and stu­dents who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a two day event. Chil­dren Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val (CLF) in Lahore proved to be a whim of fresh air which stayed here and last­ed a full two days and may well be the most impor­tant and ambi­tious event regard­ing chil­dren on the city’s cul­tur­al map in recent years.

Once again, Idara-e-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA), Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press (OUP) and Foun­da­tion Open Soci­ety Insti­tute (FOSI) Pak­istan, were head­ed to Lahore for the cel­e­bra­tion of Children’s Lit­er­a­ture Fes­ti­val at Chil­dren Library Com­plex on 30th and 31st Octo­ber 2013.
The Lahore CLF is the sev­enth lit­er­a­ture fes­ti­val for the chil­dren of Pak­istan; the first was held in Novem­ber 2011 in Lahore fol­lowed by Quet­ta, Peshawar, Bahawalpur, Karachi and Islam­abad in 2012/2013. Attend­ed by thou­sands of par­tic­i­pants, CLF aims to pro­mote read­ing, cre­ativ­i­ty and crit­i­cal think­ing among chil­dren. CLF is an equal­iz­er open to all chil­dren and all school sys­tems, unlock­ing the pow­er of read­ing through mul­ti-sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences.

An excit­ing and fun-filled pro­gram was planned for the CLF Lahore fea­tur­ing: talks and read­ings by famous children’s writ­ers; oppor­tu­ni­ties for chil­dren to lis­ten to their favorite books being read, sung aloud and dis­cussed; ses­sions on cre­ative writ­ing, book­mak­ing, infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy; book reviews, book launch­es; ple­nary ses­sions pop­u­lar­iz­ing moth­er tongue; the­atre, car­toons, pup­pet shows, films; art/craft and pot­tery ses­sions; and many more children’s activ­i­ties relat­ed to read­ing. It also host­ed an amaz­ing Book Fair.

Chil­dren and edu­ca­tors from all over the coun­try attend­ed the CLF as par­tic­i­pants. On the guest list are well-known Ambas­sadors of CLF: Ameena Syed, Dr Arfa Sye­da Zehra, Rumana Hus­sain, Zubai­da Jalal, Adeel Hash­mi, Mira Hash­mi, Nadia Jamil, Sania Saeed, Zubei­da Mustafa, Fahd Hus­sain, Samar Minal­lah, Fauzia Minal­lah, Khaled Anam, Akram Dost, Basarat Kaz­im, Alif Laila Book Bus Library and many more.

CLF was aimed to enhance the book friend­ly atti­tude among chil­dren. There­fore in order to pro­vide more options for chil­dren to read and grow their imag­i­na­tion, it also launched its bi-month­ly mag­a­zine Uran Tashtree. It is a new addi­tion to the ever grow­ing fam­i­ly of CLF.

On enter­ing the com­plex for attend­ing this fes­ti­val, one had to make a choice between dif­fer­ent ses­sions; there were approx­i­mate­ly 18 activ­i­ties at the same time in dif­fer­ent rooms. Every ses­sion had its own essence and atmos­phere where renowned edu­ca­tion­al per­son­al­i­ties from whole of Pak­istan were busy in inter­act­ing with the chil­dren, uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, teach­ers and oth­er par­tic­i­pants.

From the out­set, the Fes­ti­val promised a trans­form­ing expe­ri­ence; one finds him/herself in some fic­tion­al world where there are arti­fi­cial big flow­ers, rooms named as air cas­tle room, hob­by room, sto­ry read­ing room, toy sec­tion and many more. The hang­ing pic­tures drawn into a glass sheet by stu­dents worked as icing on the cake. The whole trans­for­ma­tion became thick­er when one enters into the rooms. The ani­ma­tion slides and well dec­o­rat­ed inte­ri­or gave a feel of per­fec­tion­ism.

The entire set of activ­i­ties was designed keep­ing in view the inter­est of young stu­dents. The var­i­ous names for them are sub­stan­tial evi­dence; Tana Bana by Amra Alam, Pap­pu Ka Paneer – a play by Thes­pi­anz The­atre, pre­sen­ta­tion on Biloonghra series by Asad Mian, Sher Ki Batain by Arfa Saye­da Zehra and Suno Gup­shup by Adeel and Mira Hash­mi were some of the first choic­es of every stu­dent to attend.

With the col­lab­o­ra­tion of Dawn News and City FM 89, there were series of live car­toon pre­sen­ta­tions and Mup­pet show mod­er­at­ed by Nigar Nazar. As these ani­mat­ed ses­sions took off, there was a pin drop silence among the once naughty, talk­a­tive chil­dren.

There were con­tin­u­ous out­door activ­i­ties as well where uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents mod­er­at­ed dif­fer­ent ses­sions. Many of us have seen put­li-tamasha on TV, thanks to CLF for arrang­ing it live. The bright and col­or­ful pup­pets in the appar­el of humans and ani­mals enact­ed rich folk sto­ries of the region.

It would be wrong to not to men­tion the inter­ac­tive ses­sions of Zam­beel Dra­mat­ic Read­ings con­duct­ed by a group of six TV and the­atre actors. They in their var­i­ous ses­sions nar­rat­ed a sto­ry while each char­ac­ter just sat on a chair enact­ing his/her role. The absence of entire stage did not cre­ate hin­drance in mov­ing every one into the sto­ry. The pur­pose was to enhance imag­i­na­tion and to make the minds com­pre­hend and respond active­ly.

‘A con­ver­sa­tion on the role of media in pop­u­lar­iz­ing and unlock­ing the pow­er of read­ing’ was up to the mark ses­sion which was attend­ed by uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, activists and writ­ers. Mushar­raf Zai­di while mod­er­at­ing the ses­sion high­light­ed the role of media in affect­ing trends in our coun­try.

Despite the mul­ti­ple activ­i­ties, the stall of Alif Ailaan, an edu­ca­tion cam­paign, attract­ed mas­sive audi­ence. This stall was pro­vid­ing each vis­i­tor the sta­tis­ti­cal data on the state of edu­ca­tion in his/her respec­tive dis­trict. They had their plen­ty of cam­paign mate­r­i­al, shirts, pledge cards, sig­na­ture books and team of vol­un­teers which gath­ered everyone’s inter­est.

Most impor­tant­ly the fes­ti­val was designed to leave far reach­ing impact on young minds. In every room there was an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn and pre­serve it as a won­der­ful mem­o­ry. There were var­i­ous ses­sions which entire­ly focused on guid­ing stu­dents on how to write a sto­ry, how to set­up a blog, how to devel­op self-expres­sion expres­sion etc. Some ses­sions on the his­to­ry of Pak­istan, against our reg­u­lar class room his­to­ry teach­ing, were actu­al­ly so much fun.

It is hoped that in the years to come, CLF will set a prece­dent for high­light­ing chil­dren and incul­cat­ing in them the love for learn­ing. More­over next year there should be more par­tic­i­pa­tion and involve­ment of chil­dren from less priv­i­leged back­grounds.

The writer is a stu­dent of law at Pun­jab Uni­ver­si­ty and founder of Amal, an orga­ni­za­tion to pro­tect and pro­mote demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues.