Old Textbooks, New Life: Paper Mache workshop by Himanshu Joshi

This month, our students finally got a solution to the mounting pile of old and torn textbooks in their school backyards and store rooms. Mr .Himanshu Joshi and Vinod Gosavi of Bhavans College, Mumbai, paper mache experts came to the rescue to show the students a few tricks with their old textbooks.

Students at what we’d like to call a ‘Shred Fest’!

We started off with the process of paper mache by shredding their textbooks to small pieces. Then, we soaked it for two days and next, pupled it to make it ready for use. Lastly, we hung our entire mixture in a gunny sack to drain out the water to start working on our paper mache articles.

All in all, after a week’s work we were ready with our pulp to start making items.

Here are a few photos of the entire process.

Students molding the pulp.

A group of girls working intently on the pulp.

We even had our students display these paper mache creations at the second anniversary E-Base fair and explain to the visitors and juniors at the Interpretation Centre exactly how they came to make these wonderful items!

The Paper Mache stall at the second anniversary fair at the E-Base.