Printmaking in Nepal – Esther Tyson
In March I arrived in Nepal to volunteer with the registered children’s charity Esther Benjamins Trust (EBT). The plan, to support its art projects in printmaking and bookbinding.
Art has been central to the Trust’s work as it has offered self-expression and healing to some of Nepal’s most stigmatised and traumatised children and young people. In Nepal, deaf people are cruelly nicknamed “lato” (“stupid”) and condemned to remain at the margins of society through the ignorance and archaic attitudes of many able-bodied people. They have little hope of finding gainful employment. However the Trust has given deaf school leavers the opportunity to prove what they are capable of by involving them in eye-catching community art projects and through teaching them skills in printmaking, jewellery and mosaic art that are allowing them to make products for sale in Nepal and abroad.
Art has also been used to provide healing to trafficking survivors who have been through the almost unimaginable hell of the sex trade. Returnees face the same kind of contempt as deaf people and the toughest of challenges as they attempt to reintegrate with society and avoid being trafficked a second time. The Trust has empowered trafficking survivors, taking them beyond the highly therapeutic benefits of art and into employment within the crafts sector. Now deaf school leavers and trafficking survivors work side by side in Trust workshops with the supervision and support of Western art volunteers.
I am now at the end of my seventh week in the studio in Kathmandu and I am thoroughly enjoying working with the girls.
Dandelion notebook April 2012