Beads and Sustainability
What does a knowledge community look like? With this question in mind and with our exploratory cap on, we worked on desigining what would be equivalent to planting seeds towards an anticipated sustainability knowledge community under our initiative entitled “It’s Elementary”. We envision it as a community of people of all shapes and sizes, with at least one common trait – each one of these do spare a thought for the environment and sustainability.
Guided by our artist friend from Thiruvannamalai, who was travelling to Vadodara, we decided on hosting a workshop on making paper beads.
Paper beads? Really!!
What’s the connection between beads and sustainability?
Well, you see, beads that are available in the market are made of plastic. It’s symbolic of our use and throw culture. It’s inexpensive so one does not have to think much before buying it. And just because it’s inexpensive, one can throw it away as well after use without sparing a thought. Where do they end up then? In landfills, dumpsites, water or soil or may be in many cases burnt up with other waste for quick disposal. The plastic beads are made of plastic 🙂 and include brightly coloured toxic paints and heavy metals like lead. Once discarded, they find their way into our water bodies or soil and thus keep releasing the toxic chemicals in these mediums. It affects the animal life and marine that might end up eating them. When burnt, it releases a variety of toxic chemicals associated with plastic burning. The beads, thus become an illustrative case of “low cost, high price” everyday unsustainable items that our planet is dealing with.
The alternative – at least move to more sustainable way of using beads. Let’s make our own “Paper Beads.” As opposed to anything that you can buy in the market, making your own is slow and involves work, so one makes only as many as needed.
Anyways, enough of the backstory. Over to this Sunday, where we had about 20 participants – young and small, boys and girls – who came together to raise their sustainability quotient.
Twenty participants immersed in a creative process of cutting, rolling, pasting, and making beautiful paper beads. These beads were later used to make jewellery pieces on the spot. It was satisfying to witness the participants’ happy faces and joy of wearing the jewellery they made at the workshop. Our pledge board was full, with participants taking various pledges towards sustainable living. While ensuring that we make our workshop as nature friendly as possible, we made natural glue from refined flour for the workshop, used steel glasses, and used old cardboards and hand-painted cloth for signboards.
The paper beads making workshop was conducted by Nikita Gandhi, a Thiruvannamalai-based artist and educator who is also a sustainability champion at heart with her recycling and upcycling projects. Nikita is a founding member of ‘Natural Colours Collective’ and has honed and explored her artistic skills in various materials. Nikita took us on this fun-filled, engaging, creative and sustainable journey of paper bead making and then using these beads for making our own jewellery pieces as well. These jewellery pieces are sustainable too, as you get to choose the wire / thread that you use to thread the paper beads together.
This was It’s Elementary edition one and we look forward to continuing and strengthening this knowledge community through more such workshops and knowledge sharings every month.
Stay tuned and learn more here!!
