Pria Muzumdar

I met Pria through her daughter Pemma, whom I had worked with at TakingITGlobal, as I was executing my biggest lead design project at the 2006 International AIDS Conference. Pria is a mixed-media artist, designer and educator with degrees from India's National Institute of Design, OCA and her Master's in teaching. She currently teaches at the Institude of Child Study affiliated with OISE at the University of Toronto.

What separates Pria from other teachers is the visual learning and design thinking methods she uses in her classroom to expand the perspective of kids on social and cultural issues. With her fun and experiential crafted programs, she enriches her students' creativity and understanding of how things relate through a pedagogical approach to art and design.

I was honoured to get to know Pria and spend time with her in her vibrant house and classroom at ICS. I photographed the process of one of her programs that she's done many times throughout her years of teaching.

Pria asked me to help her put together a presentaiton for her upcoming workshop at the full-day event Beyond the Brown Crayon with Vivan Paley as keynote speaker. So I put together a document for her to use as she talked about her Cinderella Around the World and Beautiful Browns projects with the mixing of primary colours to create skintones that demonsrated the significance of racial diversity.

Click here to view the presentation if the slideshow on the right does not work on your browser.