“Learning is a Place Where Paradise can be Created”: Poetry in Indian Classrooms

I first met Jigyasa Labroo in 2016 at the National Youth Poetry Slam in Bengaluru. She was shepherding a group of twelve children, who snaked in and out of the auditorium in white T-shirts with the words SLAM OUT LOUD written on them. This was the name of her then one-year-old initiative which had begun using spoken word poetry as a tool to build empathy and confidence in children from the underprivileged sections of society. Later that day, the children took the stage and put up a show: a theatrical performance of poems they had written. Supriya performed a poem on beauty. Jyoti spoke about voice, and Suraj shared a conversation where "Earth" voices her despair to "Oxygen." They opened their hearts to the audience and offered a glimpse of their lives.

Slam Out Loud (SOL) is an organisation that educates children like Jyoti, Suraj, and Supriya in the art of poetry, theatre, music, and visual arts, and helps them build creative confidence skills such as curiosity, imagination, analytical thinking, team work, and emotional awareness. It was registered as a non-government organisation (NGO) in 2017, and nearly a decade later, continues to run its operations in four cities (Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, with its base in Delhi) and three states (Bihar, Punjab, and Maharashtra). According to their website, it has impacted the lives of approximately 900,000 children from low-income families.

SOL began because Labroo wanted to push against the broader social idea that job security ought to be both the foremost and ultimate consideration for these children's futures. In an essay published in the anthology A Letter A Poem A Home, Labroo comments, "Dreams, especially for at-risk children, are largely limited to academic outcomes and the security of employment, and I have a problem with that. I believe that something as fundamental as finding our voice, being able to express oneself, should not be limited to the privileged class."¹ Muskan, a poet mentored by SOL, like Suraj, Jyoti, and Supriya, reiterates this in her poem performed at TEDxGateway. She announces, "There should not be conditions for my voice and your voice to be heard."² In declaiming against the conditions for her inclusion in the poetry world, Muskan affirms SOL's project: she is embracing and sharing her voice in a public setting.

English-medium schools in India do not present an ideal picture when it comes to education in the arts. UNESCO's State of the Education Report 2024 noted several complexities at such institutions. Apart from an inconsistent implementation of policies and a lack of trained arts educators, it observed:

Almost half the teachers surveyed for [the] report reported that cultural elements in curricula lacked depth, focusing on theoretical or celebratory aspects instead of fostering critical engagement with socio-political and historical contexts . . . .
Additionally, there is a significant gap between formal arts education and the cultural or ecological roots of traditional art practices, particularly in rural and tribal areas, which are under-represented in curricula.³

In addition to these factors, in government or low-income private schools for children, where Supriya, Muskan, and Jyoti study, the lack of physical spaces and infrastructure limits the very possibility of performance-based arts education. Having negligible support and opportunities that build skills to strengthen socio-emotional learning (SEL), children, specifically in disadvantaged communities, cannot nurture their voices and break away from the cycle of negative outcomes.

Until the National Education Policy 2020 (NEP 2020), fostering the arts within school curricula was not a government-sanctioned priority. Early policies mentioned it (for instance, the 1992 amendment of the National Policy on Education 1986), but failed to highlight its significance. The reason for a renewed interest in the arts over the last few years is a consensus that knowledge is not enough in economies that want to be collaborative and innovation-driven. For instance, NEP 2020 acknowledges that introducing arts and culture can provide children with a sense of identity and belonging as well as increase individual happiness levels.⁴ In The Arts and the Creation of Mind, Elliot W. Eisner gives arts education a nuanced definition, identifying it as "a way of creating our lives by expanding our consciousness, shaping our dispositions, satisfying our quest of meaning, establishing contact with others, and sharing culture."⁵ NEP 2020 pursues this nuanced yet expansive sensibility, and programs like SOL build a larger social and educational infrastructure that can support students in their pursuit of the arts.

Before starting SOL, Labroo was a fellow at the non-profit organization Teach for India, which trains and places committed individuals in low-income classrooms to assist in teaching lessons, when she noticed a lack of an arts-driven education within her classroom. Between the years 2013 and 2015, several parts of India, especially the capital city of Delhi, were witnessing the emergence of an exciting new phase of spoken word poetry influenced by slam poetry in the US. This was primarily due to the rise of social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook, which allowed videos to be uploaded and shared by anyone above the age of 14. Additionally, Labroo had attended mushairas and borne witness to what a poetry gathering, in Hindi-Urdu, meant to her when she was a child. "It was my entry point into expression—it felt raw and accessible,"⁶ she says. She decided to integrate poetry into her teaching, and brought it to those who showed an interest. She wanted to break the elitism around poetry and make her children fall in love with it the way she did.

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In Spoken Word in Urban Classrooms, Maisha T. Fisher observes educator Joe Ubiles's students from his Power Writing class. These include "at-risk" adolescents from a high school in the Bronx, New York City. In the book's foreword, Anne Haas Dyson observes how the students write their "upside down feelings," which she identifies as being "unable to find [one's] footing in the rhythms of school life."⁷ She borrows this phrase from Juan Felipe Herrera's picture book The Upside Down Boy about a boy whose teacher, much like Ubiles, encourages him to use poetry to inject his own rhythm into the classroom's.

Like Ubiles, as well as Herrera's fictional teacher, Labroo emboldens her students to experience the power of poetry by tapping into spaces that allow them freedom. They are nudged to leave their identities and labels outside the classroom, but their poems emerge from these very spaces.⁸ They want their stories heard. At her TEDxGateway talk, Muskan performs a poem about mother tongues. We watch her speak about her mother's negotiation with English, a language she struggles with:

I have been asking questions about my mother tongue,

About the language that I learnt first as a child to speak

My mother tongue is clearly not English,

Because speaking fluent English is a luxury for my mother

That she never, ever got to enjoy.

My mother tongue is pure Hindi neither

My Hindi comes with terms and conditions

Because my mom taught me each and every word she knew in English

Just like a piece of cloth full of patches that barely suit the cloth 

Because speaking fluent English in India is a proof of luxury
A proof that you're educated

A proof that you deserve rights and respect⁹

Muskan's metaphors come from everyday objects (a piece of cloth with patches); there is no pretense. Her verse includes deliberately unusual syntax ("the language that I learnt first as a child to speak" and "My mother tongue is pure Hindi neither"). Her hands move as she says her lines out loud; her voice carries inflections and meaningful pauses to create a rhythm. These are all indicative of Muskan's active engagement with poetry and performance in her classroom.

Abbas Ali, another poet mentored by SOL, writes about tough questions and confrontations with everyday struggles:

सब लोग बहुत तेज़ी से भाग रहे हैं। 

कुछ लोग रुकना चाहते हैं,

लेकिन नहीं रुक सकते।
क्योंकि पीछे से धक्का महसूस होता है।

लगता है जैसे रुके तो लोग कुचल दिए जायेंगे।

शरीर के साथ सपनों को भी तोड़ दिया जाएगा। 

सपने जो मुर्दा हैं, पर अभी भी साथ है।¹⁰


Everyone is sprinting,

Some want to stop but they cannot


Because they can feel a push from behind

If they stop, they're going to be stepped on.

Their bodies and their dreams will be stamped on.
Dreams that are dead, but haven't left us, 

They still live on.

I have attempted to translate Abbas Ali's poem from the original Hindi performed at the event. His pace differs from Muskan's. He performs the poem with rap-like urgency. His words catch rhythms in rhymes. Both poets write their identities, and they also show a part of themselves by how they perform their poems.

When I think of Ubiles's Power Writing classes, I understand that his purpose was to bolster literacy among children and redefine its parameters. For him, literacy was a "vehicle for enacting power over [one's life and future]" and he did this through poetry.¹¹ Ubiles's students were engaging deeply with language processes. They were looking at how the boundaries between oral and written could be blurred. SOL works differently. It instills creative expression in children who have no access to it in their formative years. It opens creative spaces for them, so they may step into these to become confident individuals who can comprehend and manage their emotions. Both groups use poetry as an educational tool, but unlike in Ubiles's case, literacy itself is not the point for SOL. When I ask her about this, Labroo asserts, "At the heart of it, we're not trying to make the next Picasso or Shakespeare." This, she argues, is the reason that the lessons are often kept fluid. "Our approach is very learner-centric. We don't walk in with a script to teach as much as we create experiences where children explore, take risks, and express themselves. The arts are just the medium; the real outcome is agency."¹²

SOL recruits 4-7 fellows each in the four primary cities who take up the task of imparting arts education. They are called the Jijivisha Fellows—jijivisha meaning "a strong desire to live." The fellows bring an artistic practice to their classrooms, and spend a year at these low-income private schools. "If you walked into a SOL class, you would probably hear chatter and laughter before you would see anything else (things that are taboo in other spaces at school). There is usually music, colors, kids jumping up to act out a line, [embody] a character, or answer a question. They are moving, creating, writing, questioning, performing—sometimes all at once."¹³ This is how Labroo describes a SOL class to me. This creative space for play is a rarity in Indian classrooms. A structured academic curriculum that focuses on examination-based assessment creates little room for it.

If we return to Eisner's idea of arts education as a way of creation of oneself, and his reflection on the power of the sensory world or imagination that the arts unlock in a child, we can conclude that SOL recognizes this. SOL classes are closer to play, in that they collaboratively produce a space without any constraints on imagination. Moving, creating, writing, performing, etc., involve deep engagement with the sensory world. This nature of engagement, recalling Eisner's words, invites one to "slow down perception, to look hard," to explore and surrender to expression.¹⁴ Labroo reveals, "For so many children, even raising their hand or saying a poem out loud is a big leap. So, we create spaces where they feel safe to share without judgment."¹⁵

For this reason, the fellows avoid walking into the classrooms with a lesson script and allow the students to choose their medium of play. Later, they sit with the students and go deeper by giving them feedback on their creation. If we scroll through their Youtube channel, for instance, we will find a series of videos introducing forms and techniques of poetry—acrostics and concrete poems, triplets and cinquains. Labroo says, "The first step is always expression. Once that confidence builds, our fellows work with the students to refine [their work]—whether it's making a poem stronger, adding more emotion to a performance, or just experimenting with different ways of telling a story. It's a gentle balance: expression first, feedback later, so that the joy of creating never feels weighed down by correction."¹⁶ At the same time, the students get to learn about further possibilities that lie within their creations.

Additionally, SOL classes incorporate conversations about climate and gender to create socially and environmentally conscious individuals. The students take up the persona of a river or a tree, imagining life from its perspective. Sometimes, they switch roles in a skit: boys step into the shoes of girls, and vice versa. Together, they explore stereotypes through stories. "We try to weave these themes in naturally so that children aren't just informed about issues—they experience them, reflect on them, and bring their own perspectives into the dialogue," Labroo says.¹⁷

The deepest impact of SOL was felt during the pandemic. With no physical spaces, the biggest challenge for children from vulnerable communities was access to education. SOL launched a WhatsApp Channel which was easily accessible to those whose parents owned smartphones. The number was recorded as approximately 70,000 children across India and the world, with 75% of SOL students having access to their parents' phones. The team delivered worksheets and courses through this. They also prepared video lessons on theatre, poetry, and visual arts. For those without access to the internet, SOL fellows took the aid of IVRS, radio, and television networks, collaborating with other NGOs and the government. They also distributed printed material.¹⁸ The inclusion of other arts, besides poetry, Labroo recollects, "was not a top-down decision—it grew very organically from watching children and noticing what made their experience more wholesome."¹⁹ It proved useful during the pandemic as the team was able to cater to more children who needed arts during this difficult time and help with the mobilization of resources. For instance, the fellows could partner with GramVaani, a communications platform that equipped individuals with reliable information. This was used to disseminate art activities in an AV format. They shared tasks, rubrics for reflection, small engaging incentivizing activities like "Artist of the Week" and virtual workshops. If we were to visit SOL's website, we would find snatches of this work still available for easy adaptation for NGOs across the world, or for easy consumption by a bright-eyed child willing to stretch their imagination and dream.

In a SoundCloud recording, Muskan describes her classroom in a government school as a "tin-shed that was a clear victim of low funding."²⁰ She remembers sitting on the floor and studying under the metallic shed with sluggish fans. She emphasizes how this was not a choice she made. Dinner conversations for her ended in arguments because she dreamed of a private school education, which was synonymous with quality teachers and curriculum, better infrastructure, and a place with creative possibilities. Her family, however, could not afford it. When a favorite teacher nudged her to write a poem, she wrote about her icon Malala Yousafzai, who inspired her to study hard despite all odds. "I remember my peers listening so carefully, trying to understand my words, my sentences, and most importantly, my emotions. Since then, the only thing that has kept me going in all phases of my life is poetry."²¹ Muskan was not among the twelve poets who performed in Bengaluru in 2016; she started writing and performing much later. In her recording, she insists that poetry was where she found her home. "I stopped looking for tangible pleasures. I stopped caring whether . . . my classroom had concrete walls, if I had benches to sit, or if the fan was working. Rather, I wanted to discover metaphors for my poems. That was my actual treasure."²²

Since then, she has performed at various stages, including Asia's largest storytelling festival, Spoken Fest, and India's biggest TEDx platform, TEDxGateway Mumbai. She has also recorded online lesson plans on poetry for the underprivileged children uninitiated in the artform. Additionally, she received a scholarship to study in one of the most respected private schools in New Delhi, where she completed her high school, and this time, had a choice. Muskan has been pursuing her dreams, and acknowledges poetry as a significant catalyst. So do Abbas, Jyoti, Supriya, and those who have been a part of the SOL classrooms. Abbas now teaches as a Jijivisha Fellow, dedicating hours to share all that he learnt with new generations. He continues to write rap. His rap on gender equality led to a campaign called #KaunsiBadiBaatHai run by UN Women with TikTok to raise awareness against gender-based violence.²³

When I think of the impact that SOL has had on these children, I know it is by no means small. I am reminded of "education as the practice of freedom," as bell hooks puts it. I am reminded that "learning is a place where paradise can be created"; a classroom "remains a location of possibility";²⁴ a place where knowledge can be questioned with a little push from imagination, the keystone of all art and all poetry.

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Nandini Varma (@nandinivarma) is a writer and researcher based in Mumbai. In 2014, she co-founded Airplane Poetry Movement, an organisation which provided quality education in poetry in India. For her work, she was included in the Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 and ILA 30 Under 30 lists. She co-edited the anthology A Letter A Poem A Home, a collection of conversations, essays, and poems from poets across the world. During her MPhil at the University of Delhi, her academic essays were published in the inaugural issue of the Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce peer-reviewed journal as well as Re-temporalising the Cultural in India (Bloomsbury 2025). Her interests include South Asian literature, though she doesn't mind indulging in an Austen classic from time to time. She writes regularly on art and culture for Mid-day, a Mumbai-daily.

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References

1. Jigyasa Labroo, "'This Voice is Mine!' Poetry at Slam Out Loud," in A Letter A Poem A Home, ed. Shantanu Anand and Nandini Varma (Red River Press, 2020), 108. ↩︎
2. TEDx Talks, "Fostering an Environment for Young Poets to Find their Voice | Slam Out Loud," YouTube, July 2, 2020, 4:30-33, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Ub0BOVdJM ↩︎
3. UNESCO, "State Education Report India 2024." UNESCO, 2024, https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/state-education-report-india-2024 ↩︎
4. "National Education Policy 2020," Ministry of Education, 2020, 53-54, https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf ↩︎
5. Elliot W. Eisner, The Arts and the Creation of Mind (Yale University Press, 2002), 3. ↩︎
6. Labroo, "'This Voice is Mine!' Poetry at Slam Out Loud," 108. ↩︎
7. Maisha T Fisher, Writing in Rhythm: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Classrooms (Teachers College Press, 2007), ix. ↩︎
8. Suraj Kiran, "In Conversation with Jigyasa Labroo | Leadership in Education," YouTube, Aug 21, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whnhIE3FqpM ↩︎
9. TEDx Talks, "Fostering an Environment for Young Poets to Find their Voice," 3:24-4:33. ↩︎
10. TEDx Talks, "Fostering an Environment for Young Poets to Find their Voice," 10:57-11:35. ↩︎
11. Fisher, Writing in Rhythm, 3-5. ↩︎
12. Jigyasa Labroo, personal interview via phone, August 15, 2025. ↩︎
13. Labroo, personal interview, 2025 ↩︎
14. Eisner, The Arts and the Creation of Mind, 4. ↩︎
15. Labroo, personal interview, 2025 ↩︎
16. Labroo, personal interview, 2025 ↩︎
17. Labroo, personal interview, 2025 ↩︎
18. Seep Agrawal, Jigyasa Labroo, Gaurav Singh, et al, "Education Continuity during the Coronavirus," OECD Education and Skills Today, 2020, https://oecdedutoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/India-Arts-For-All-Slam-Out-Loud.pdf ↩︎
19. Labroo, personal interview, 2025 ↩︎
20. Muskan Tanwani, "How Poetry Transformed Me," SoundCloud, Podcast, May 17, 2021, 0:01-0:15, https://soundcloud.com/muskan-tanwani-920851402/podcast ↩︎
21. Tanwani, "How Poetry Transformed Me," 1:19-1:30. ↩︎
22. Tanwani, "How Poetry Transformed Me," 1:45-2:06. ↩︎
23. "UN Women India and TikTok UNiTE to Break the Silence, End Violence," UN India, November 25, 2019,
    https://india.un.org/en/163166-un-women-india-and-tiktok-unite-break-silence-end-violence ↩︎
24. bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress (Routledge, 1994), 207. ↩︎