Center in collaboration with Palladium Pakistan and support from UK Aid held a series of lectures at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture from April 25 to 27, 2018. The prestigious academic institute joined the second league of participating institutions that are in the process of inducting the Entertainment-Education Curriculum. Altogether, within a span of one year, eight institutes have already taught the curriculum while three more plan to pilot it in 2018.
The three-day series of lectures was delivered to third year students by CCPP staff members.The aim was to introduce entertainment-education and to encourage the class to apply this strategy in their mini-thesis and thesis respectively.
One day one, Senior Media Advisor, Mr. Ehtesham Abbas introduced students to the strategy of entertainment-education and talked about the importance of including social themes in a range of media formats. The following day, Executive Director, Dr. Atif Ikram Butt presented some basic and important ground on which the entertainment-education curriculum is built such as the origins of this strategy, theories that inform behaviour change drama and the impact of entertainment-education products. On day three, Program Specialist, Ms. Natasha Ejaz concluded the series by laying the groundwork for creative thinking on the lines of using a transitional character in storytelling together with addressing going beyond stereotypes and using role models for behaviour change. The last session also involved group work where students came up with story outlines on a social issue of their choice.
Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture plans to include the curriculum in their Communication Design department in the second semester of 2018.