College cultural fests

A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.            Larry Bird

As simple as it sounds; we all must try to be the best person we can: by making the best choices, by making the most of the talents we've been given. Mary Lou Retton

Cultural fests in colleges can be an extension of the student learning and overall development. Some people are of the opinion that it really doesn’t bring out any talent amongst the college students and it really doesn’t help them in the long run. With the cultural fest just concluding at our institute it made me go through all the aspects of the entire exercise. Right from planning, the execution, to the follow up, students were involved at every stage and they came up with great work and display of talent.

The moment the dates for the fest were announced, Students were asked to come with up posters with their own interpretation of the different events. The result was amazing. We had fabulous posters adorning the institute hallways. Every passerby took note of the work and it encouraged other students to participate in the events.

As the days drew closer the buzz and the vibe was electric amongst the students. Finally we were ready for the fest, the students didn’t have their regular classes but had to be participating in the events. The fest commenced with Rangoli competition, We got to see the traditional as well as extremely non confirmative designs using colours, flowers and even food grains.

Extempore was the second event of the day, the topics given were very tricky and general in particular. The participants had only 5 minutes to prepare on the topic and speak for 3 minutes. The audience loved listening to the participants’ take on the subject this was followed by the solo singing competition. The audience got to hear some melodies numbers sung by the participants. There were some self composed songs as well and the voice, some trained and some untrained. The photography contest gave us the glimpse and works of some talented photographers among our students. Post lunch activities were Collage, where the material was provided to the teams and they had to come up with their own representation of any one theme from the 5 given to them.  The final act for day one was the solo dance, there were trained dancers presenting classical acts and some were based on Bollywood.  The crowd joined in cheering up the participants, it was certainly packed with fun and we got to see so much of talent, which is difficult to discover in the regular teaching classes.

Day two of the fest was followed as an Ethnic day where everyone including the staff were expected to be in their traditional finery. There were all group competitions lined up for the day. Product and process innovation had 2 members in a team marketing and selling their new product launches. We got to see really innovative ideas that were marketed convincingly. Group dance got everyone grooving to the Arabic beats of the belly dance to the robotic take with another group. The street play had a social message ‘Smoking kills’.  The Quiz final round had qualifying teams from the First, second and the third year students. The audiences participated whole heartedly and were cheer leaders for their teams. Then was the time to judge the best dressed male and female student for their ethnic wear. We got to see the students in their traditional attire and explaining what dressing like that meant in their community.

The students loved the platform given to them to showcase their talents and we got to see some amazing performances and hidden talents among our students. It was certainly worth the two days spent doing other things that contribute to the overall development of the students.