Arts for All by Slam Out Loud

Despite growing evidence that children from adversity need Social-emotional learning and life skills to break the cycle of negative outcomes and thrive, Indian education struggles to build these.

Pandemic induced school closures that left 320 Million students in India out of classrooms only exacerbated this challenge; with elevated problems of high stress/anxiety, increased learner loneliness, lack of creative engagement, and a digital divide (53% children do not have access to internet) our most vulnerable children need equitable social-emotional+wellbeing support, more than ever. 

SOL’s Arts for All program leverages art and low-tech platforms like WhatsApp, Radio and Interactive Voice Response Systems (IVRS) to deliver mental well-being+SEL support to vulnerable children at scale. By offering localised, need-sensitive and engaging at-home audio, video, text, and print resources for learners with limited internet access, we’re leading children towards creative outcomes+building mental resilience. Our resources are free-of-cost, interactive, and accessible in four languages.

Our intervention aims to address 2 key issues:

Enhance student well-being. Pandemic-induced school closures have left some 1.5 billion students globally out of the classroom (World Bank, 2020). In India, school closures have affected 320 million children, further increasing educational inequity and adding to the anxiety/stress levels of learners. One challenge that educators across the globe are facing is to prioritise student well-being, with learner loneliness increasing on account of the lack of social interaction/creative output.

Reaching students with diverse access to technology. Nationally, only 24% of Indian households have access to the Internet. 66% of India’s population lives in villages, and only a little over 15% of rural households have access to Internet services. For urban households, the proportion is 42%. This makes it challenging to reach a vast majority of children in India with remote learning. However, India has more than 400 million active WhatsApp users. 53% of phone users in India use non-internet enabled phones (National Statistical Office, 2019).

SOL’s intervention is designed keeping in focus India’s diverse access to technology. We’ve ensured our program is  flexible+context sensitive to be hosted across different platforms to reach children in the most under-resourced spaces.

Arts For All (AFA) is India’s first COVID-response project that leverages art and low-tech mediums to focus on children’s well being and SEL skills, at a cost of 0.5 US$ per child per month (other organizations start at costs of about $4-5).

75% of children in our programs access their parent’s WhatsApp for at least an hour/day. We deploy content in various formats like text, image, video, and voice notes and implement it using whatsapp bots to make for more equitable learning opportunities for children with diverse learning skills and needs, and ensure these are made available free of cost.

Our intervention is highly scalable with content that’s flexible, age-appropriate and available in 6 languages to reach children across key states in the country . With robust monitoring systems, our program is already disseminated to 4.7 million children across 23 Indian States and 19 countries - allowing us to revise program processes with feedback received from children and educators. Our program design also offers children opportunities to share their art and feel successful, andreduce Learner Loneliness. Our content can be hosted across channels - with or without the internet, making it accessible in low and no-internet spaces.

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds face a lack of engaging opportunities to build creative confidence and are thereby disempowered to harness their voices to break the cycle of negative outcomes.  Art education has globally proved to build skills that help children be more employable and without it, they are 2X more likely to slip into poverty (National Endowment for the Arts, 2012). Yet the average art teacher: student ratio in India is 1:1400 (RTI filed by Slam Out Loud) with less than 20 hours of art-based education for a child each year. We work with children whose annual family income is less than ₹1.5 lakh and are studying in Govt / affordable private/ Open schools. Since its inception, SOL has pursued a vision that “Every individual will have a voice that empowers them to change lives.” 

Through our endeavors, we have enabled 35,000+ original artworks created by children. Slam Out Loud has created a one of its kind self-learning art curriculum in 2 vernacular languages for children in rural India that engages more than 50000 children and 200 community leaders in art-based learning. The educational body of the state government of Gujarat, GCERT has added SOL’s remote learning content to its state-wide remote learning packets. Thus, while our long-term, high-touch programs create footprints in the lives of 50,000 children across India, our low-tech art-learning resources have brought the magic of arts to 4.7 million children across 23 Indian States and 19 countries.

Using high-frequency oral diagnostics to assess engagement and growth on Creative Confidence aspects in children along with Qualitative surveys of stakeholders to monitor growth in our Art-proficiency rubric; our programs have depicted a significant increase in children’s SEL skills (communication, critical thinking, creativity, and self-esteem). We’ve learnt that the addition of art into education has a profound effect on children’s learning because art never tells them they are wrong. Instead, it provides them with a space where their ideas, feelings and identity is accepted without iteration. And that is exactly what a space for fostering wellness looks like.

Broadly, the power of Art in SEL translated into three interrelated changes that we have observed in students who have consistently been exposed to artistic opportunities and experiences:

• Learning to Grow and Stretch as Artists, which relates to how students gain a sense of competence through the arts

• Building Supportive and Meaningful Connections, which concerns the supportive and meaningful relationships that they build with their peers and mentors when participating in art activities and,

• Letting go of the Inner Critic and Discovering the Authentic Voice, which is connected with how the arts provide students with opportunities to garner a sense of autonomy, let go of their self judgement, and adopt an open attitude.

During pandemic-induced school closures, our Arts for All (AFA) Program aims to prevent learning loss by fostering students’ SEL skills and well-being through low-tech mediums like WhatsApp, Radio, TV and IVRS to offer high-quality, engaging, at-home DIY style multilingual content. All AFA activities allow children to engage in ‘play’ based learning, collaborate with peers/family, and engage with their communities. Our newest content also integrates issues of Social Justice (like gender-sensitivity/climate action) into the curriculum. AFA is disseminated through both; direct networks with students+through training sessions for educators who then take the material to their students. 

We are at this stage because:

• We have developed and piloted the AFA product for 4 months (April-July) with 500 children from SOL’s programs 

• After assessing+refining the product; we ran a districtwide pilot in Punjab with 1.4 lakh children for 8 weeks

• The solution was picked up and implemented with state governments reaching 4.7 Million children

• Meanwhile, we further refined our technologies to make content pieces flexible enough to be hosted across various technological platforms while also translating the material to vernacular languages to ensure the product is scalable in multiple contexts. 

• Our current intervention is disseminated through partnerships with state governments. We aim to work with them over the year, using WhatsApp+Television as the key mediums

• We have also hired for specialized roles, raised additional funding to take this program to more beneficiaries and towards 2022-23 - aim for rapid expansion that allows us to enter the ‘scale’ phase 

SOL believes in using arts as a vehicle to empower individuals from different socio-economic backgrounds. Unlike most art-education spaces, we use arts as the means to an end, helping children build creative-confidence for thriving in the world.

We are context-sensitive and integrate technology to scale our work efficiently. SOL’s indigenous WhatsApp chatbot can be accessed with low-internet bandwidth and it automates the way children receive and engage with art lessons. It also enables SOL to track learning and feedback for each beneficiary. By incorporating the Internet of Things (IoT) we are using a combination of highly intuitive user interfaces, Natural Language Understanding and Machine learning to automatically respond to certain queries, very similar to a Voice Response system when one calls a bank.

Our most recent curriculum also fosters inclusivity by integrating the Indian Sign Language for learners with hearing impairments. It’s also highly flexible to be hosted across platforms with contextual, multilingual and age-appropriate content, making it an innovative way to continue student learning during the pandemic. 

We do this at a nominal cost of ~10$ per child while other organizations in the same field start at ~40$ per child per year.

Through this, we aim to achieve the following:

a) Allowing children a more conversational approach to learning along with increased agency

b) Increasing our ability to reach more children with a sense of urgency

c) Allowing children to own their learning from a host of available options

d) Enabling children to share their learning with us, seamlessly

Currently, our programs are reaching a cumulative number of 4.7 million children. This number is derived primarily from impact assessments of 3 major programs:

1. The Jijivisha Fellowship (TJF)

2. Voice for All (VFA)

3. Arts for All (AFA) 

The table below offers the current number of students impacted and our projection for the next 1 and 5 years:

Slam out Loud employs a three-pronged strategy for monitoring and evaluation of impact goals:

• Data-driven program design: SOL has built comprehensive ToCs for each programme to ensure all assumptions are accounted for. All program features - content and platforms - are piloted rigorously through A/B testing before roll-out.

• Expert panel review: SOL is curating a panel of Ed-Tech experts who will provide in-depth product review on the design and quality aspects of programmes using  a detailed rubric co-developed by the experts and SOL on design, user experience, and technology.

• Monitoring programme fidelity: SOL has a monitoring system consisting of real-time administrative data, rapid quantitative surveys, and targeted qualitative surveys to ensure the program is being implemented as per the ToC. Some key indicators we track are:

  • The Jijivisha Fellowship

    • Number of children enrolled

    • Yearly attrition of children 

    • Attendance tracking of fellows+children

    • Completion of all activities

  • Voice for All

    • Number of children accessing the programme

    • Hours spent on SOL’s content vs. other courses

    • Attrition after each module

    • Average scores on quizzes designed to check engagement 

  • Art for All

    • Number of activities completed per week per child

    • Number of children/parents reporting challenges in comprehension of material

    • Number of children submitting completed art works

• Evaluation of key outcomes: SOL conducted pre-post studies using the Creative Confidence Scale developed internally to monitor improvements in SEL outcomes. Now, we’re working on leveraging alternative evaluation approaches like Difference-in-differences design and a randomised control trial. In the future, we plan to commission independent programme evaluations. 

Our robust full time team consists of 10 individuals who are supported by 4 full-time interns. Alongside this, we have advisors, consultants and volunteers who work with us on a need-based basis. 

Our team has the attitude, skills, and smarts to get SOL to our vision and scale in the coming few years. Our team comes from backgrounds of arts, education, fundraising, monitoring and evaluation, communication design, and marketing - all of which together make us best placed to execute our scaling strategy.

Business Development, Curriculum Design, and Fundraising

 -Jigyasa Labroo (CEO/Co-Founder): Computer Science Engineer and alumni of Teach for India, WISE, SIF, specializes in Fundraising and Business -Development

-Shaleen Wadhwana (Arts Partnerships Consultant): SOAS London, Art and Culture Specialist

-Jahanara Rabia Raza (Content Consultant): Young India Fellow, Masters in Art in Education, Cambridge

-Umaima Ehtasham (Specialist: Curriculum and Digital Pedagogy): Alumni of Piramal Foundation’s Gandhi Fellowship; specializes in curriculum development

-Aastha Singh (Communications Associate): History and Visual Art, Ashoka University, Communications and Digital Marketing specialist

Monitoring & Evaluation, Program Development and Implementation

-Gaurav Pratap Singh (COO/Co-Founder): Masters in Public Administration from National University of Singapore; Teach for India alum; specializes in M&E, Operations, Finance and HR

-Drashti Shah: Alumn of NMIMS, Ashoka University and ISDM with past experience from Akanksha Foundation; Leads programs operations, Management and facilitation 

- Mridula Reddy: Alumni of FLAME University and an ex Teach For India Fellow; supports program operations and management 

-Akash Pattanayak: Data on Demand Associate with ID Insight, Product Design Consultant

In spite of being a small team, our company culture aims to consciously develop a team that’s diverse in representation (in terms of gender/sexual orientation, language, religion, race, caste, age-group and experience). We believe this is the only way to ensure our work and products are both accessible and joyful for each individual - no matter who they are or where they come from. 

We employ multiple approaches to ensure we remain diverse and inclusive, in both thought and action. For instance, when we launched our latest hiring cycle; we purposefully promoted each opening across platforms that cater to/offer opportunities to marginalised communities. Recently, we also recruited a specially-abled person as an intern on our team. Further, our newest learning resource Gen eARTh offers audio-visual storytelling experiences which have been translated into the Indian Sign Language (ISL) to promote accessibility. While we have already begun including issues of Social Justice like gender equity and climate action within our resources, going forward, we intend to make our resources as accessible as possible by offering learning experiences that are multilingual and translated into sign language. 

We envision Slam Out Loud to be an organization where the role of arts in building creative confidence in children is understood through research, defined through hands-on exploration and design, redefined through learning and feedback, recognised through providing platforms, fostered through mentorship, replicated through documentation and shared through advocacy.  

Given these goals, we believe that a partnership with the Solve programme is ideal for us, especially due to the team of advisors we would get to share space with upon selection. 

The programme will enable our remote learning resources to reach almost 15 million children over the next 3 years and to scale our project in 10 major Indian States to make content accessible, adaptable and free of cost to children. We aim to reserve 5-10% of the prize as Capital Cost which will aid in the setting up of a low-tech WhatsApp API that will redefine how children receive activities regularly, and in setting up an Integrated Voice Response System (IVRS) for children with little to no internet access.  A majority of the fund will help us sustain operation costs, including costs for program development, dissemination costs as well as in designing a curriculum that keeps children's well-being at the forefront- therefore helping us three main challenges- Market, Operations and finance. The funds will also enable us to bring together like-minded changemakers who can contribute to our vision, and help amplify children’s voices across the world. 

We do not think we meet the eligibility criteria for the prize. However, if the funder is specifically interested in our project, we would be more than happy to have a conversation and explore synergies! 

We do not think we meet the eligibility criteria for the prize. However, if the funder is specifically interested in our project, we would be more than happy to have a conversation and explore synergies!