IndiaWest
The American India Foundation commemorated its efforts at the forefront of cultural diplomacy with a delegation of students and teachers from India and Pakistan participating earlier this month at its International Youth Summit.
The event also included the world premiere of “Folk Lok,” a cutting-edge multimedia piece exploring diaspora and change through the meeting of hip-hop and folk culture, according to a press release.
Through its cross-cultural exchange and educational initiative called “Our Family, Our Neighborhood, Our World,” AIF has been working to empower youth and innovate in education using creative methodologies in the greater Punjab for the past two years.
The project is helping to strengthen civil society in India and Pakistan by building communities of service and cooperation, while inspiring young people to think globally and act locally.
Combining traditional art forms with modern technology to help youth shape their identities as creative agents of change and design their own solutions to take action in their communities, the O3 project has impacted more than 3,000 students and 100 teachers in three countries.Students learned about new cultures and collaborated to create intercultural dance and art tapestries hosted by Menlo School, which has partnered with AIF as part of its efforts to build new global citizenship and learning opportunities for its student body.At the Miner Auditorium at the SFJAZZ Center, international Punjabi-American recording artist Mandeep Sethi premiered “Folk Lok,” an intergenerational multimedia piece examining the human expressions of folk culture and hip-hop in Punjab and the diaspora through film and a live musical performance.
Sethi was a grant recipient of AIF’s Arts Innovation Fund, another dimension of the O3 project created “as a means to catalyze cultural inquiry and diversity as a means to strengthen our communities and formulate new approaches to common problem-solving,” project creator Drew Foxman stated in the press release.
