London 21st August 2011
Yesterday, the Victoria & Albert Museu
m, in conjunction with Jainpedia and with support from the Jain Art Fund, held a fun day of activities, storytelling and a very creative art and craft drop in design workshop.
This event held with dual objective of widening the awareness of Jainism through the media of JAINpedia and to promote the awareness of the rich cultural heritage held in the UK to the Jain community at large.
Several enjoyed the story-telling by Seema Anand, who has an entertaining and interactive style that keeps the audience glued to their seats. The audience moved on to the Sackler Centre and completed worksheets which gave a brief description of Jainism and asked people to hunt for plants and animals from not only within the JAINpedia display, but also the rest of the museum. The participants were spoilt for choice, and created some beautiful manuscripts from dung paper, lentils and various craft items.
The JAINpedia volunteers invited museum visitors to the various events, sought feedback from the attendees and carried out tours of the display. They helped children identify animals from within the Jain manuscript collection, 
and at the same time told them some of the stories within the manuscripts. Children were fascinated, and adults were intrigues by the history, concepts and culture of Jainism from the tours.
A successful event, with not only more events to look forward to, but also a highly detailed multi-media website, with Jain manuscripts digitized, described, translated and explained with the aid of various contextual articles by Jain scholars like Nalini Balbir.
The JAINpedia display is on at the Victoria & Albert Museum until December 2012, and if you would like to book a tour of the display, please contact us on the below details.
The JAINpedia project has a newsletter with up-to date news and events, if you would like to sign up for it, or even sign up to be a volunteer or support us in any other manner please also contact us at the below details.
JAINpedia Contact:
Bansri Mehta
Email: info@jainpedia.org
Tel: 020 8236 1011