School Kalolsavam: Student works now live forever online

Thrissur: Long after the curtains came down on the Kerala School Kalolsavam on Sunday, the voices, colors, and ideas of hundreds of students continued to resonate—this time in the digital world. Over the past eight editions of the arts festival, more than 5,000 literary and artistic works created by students have been carefully preserved through a large-scale digital archiving initiative, ensuring that creativity born on competition stages is not lost to time.The effort is led by Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE), the official technology arm of the education department, with support from Wikimedians of Kerala, a volunteer collective contributing to Wikipedia and allied knowledge platforms.Together, they have archived student works spanning 48 events—from poems, essays, and short stories to paintings, collages, and posters—many of which were previously discarded after the festival.This year alone, over 720 literary works from high school and higher secondary categories were digitized and uploaded to the School Wiki platform. What makes the initiative distinctive is student participation: Young creators themselves, alongside volunteers, help catalog and upload material, turning archiving into a collaborative learning experience.The shift marks a dramatic departure from earlier practices. Until 2015, student works were retained only for about six months to address possible disputes over results, then discarded. "Before 2016, even the creator could not see their work once they exited the competition venue," said Vijayan Rajapuram, School Wiki state coordinator. "Now, as soon as results are published, works are uploaded to School Wiki and made accessible to the public."Crucially, archived works are released under open licensing norms, allowing reproduction without prior permission, provided due credit is given—an approach aligned with open knowledge principles. KITE CEO Anwar Sadath said Kalolsavam archiving is part of the larger School Wiki initiative launched in 2009, which documents over 15,000 schools in Kerala. During Covid-19, the platform recorded nearly 60,000 student works under the 'Akshara Vriksham' project. Looking ahead, Sadath said KITE plans to extract text from images to make works searchable online and explore audio podcasts and video stories based on students' creations.Manoj Karingamadathil of Wikipedians of Kerala summed up its cultural significance: "If we could revisit works from the earliest Kalolsavams, many creators would now be renowned artists. This archive is a cultural goldmine in the making—priceless and accessible to all."