Yuewai Wong conducts the course in Calcutta. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

The term ?black box? has escaped its usually macabre connotations in a new educational project at the Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre. The Black Box Project, taking place from January 9 to 14, is a seminar designed to stretch the creativity of children through an educational experience.

The course, conducted by Yuewai Wong of Hong Kong, will also travel to New Delhi and Mumbai.

Wong is part of an independent cultural collective called Zuni Icosahedron, founded in 1982 to promote alternative arts in multimedia formats. The course has met with some success, with Denmark including the exercise in its national curriculum.

Children are given black boxes in which to place objects that express their self the best. But before the children begin work on their own boxes, they play a game to guess what is in a box passed around in the group, an exercise designed to sharpen their senses.

The relevance to the Indian system was evident when Wong cited an inflexible and restrictive curriculum in Hong Kong as the inspiration for The Black Box Project. Calling for ?some restructuring of our approach to the arts?, he observed how ?the art and music courses already in place in schools are skewed in their approach, and seem to be only a method of killing time?.

To introduce an element of sustainability, Wong and his associates included a morning session dedicated to instructing teachers of the children, who would in turn act as facilitators in future sessions.

The nature of the project is decidedly esoteric, with the emphasis being on the concept rather than figurative artistic execution. The deliberately broad and topical theme for the group is The Children of Calcutta.

The kids involved in the exercise come from a broad spectrum. Some of the youngsters ? a majority being girls ? are in formal schools, others are from underprivileged backgrounds.

The course went down well with the children. ?The exercise has helped me appreciate the feelings involved in art, and it has broadened my outlook,? said Saranyu Moitra, 14. ?It has helped me interpret feelings, and I also like the fact that we can choose what is put into our box.?

The culmination of the exercise is a three-day exhibition at the Seagull Arts Centre, comprising all the black boxes that the children have created during the workshop with a difference.