A two day workshop on Identity was held at The Seagull Foundation for the Arts.

The facilitators of the workshop were Sister Cyril (Loreto Sealdah), Swati Lal (Bridge International School), Kingshuk Chatterjee (Scottish Church College) and Anjum Katyal (Seagull Foundation for the Arts).

Teachers from the following schools participated in the workshop: St. James, Mahadevi Birla Girls High School, Patha Bhavan, Loreto Sealdah, Chowringhee High School, Future Foundation, Future Hope and G.D. Birla Centre for Education.

The workshop started with Soumya Kanti De Biswas’s riveting performance of Invocations, one of the dramatic mono- logues from Hidden Fires written by Manjula Padmanabhan. Following that Anjum Katyal conducted group activities dealing with basic concepts of given identity and acquired identity and personal experiences of identity.

During the afternoon session, Swati Lal dealt with Prejudices and Stereotypes. Sister Cyril took the final session on the first day. Her session was greatly appreciated by the participants. Kingshuk Chatterjee in his session on Day 2 recapitulated the discussions and conclusions of the previous day and then conducted activities on what it means to be an Indian. At the final session the participants were divided into three groups and asked to make a lesson plan on any one topic covered by the workshop. Later they individually proposed how they could take the PeaceWorks programme forward in their schools.

All the participants gave positive feedback and many of them showed an interest for attending similar workshops in the future