As my friend, Puteri, perfectly explained it, “Media is the true rulers of the world! Why? Because you don’t know its controlling you and we (art students) are behind it all!” and then she proceeded to laugh maniacally with ominous thunder and lighting cracking behind her.

“You’re too smart to go to art stream” is what teachers would tell us when we have somewhat decent grades (particularly in maths and science) and the tip of our pens would ever stray to write the word ‘Art’ when we wanted to choose which stream to go to in the beginning of Form 4.

A Little Explanation for Our Non-Malaysian Steemians 

In the Malaysian education system, in secondary school, after we’ve taken our PMR (Penilaian Menengah Rendah, or according to Wikipedia in English, the Lower Secondary Assessment exam), the next level of education is basically separated between Science and Arts (or Humanities) generally (there are other streams but I’ll focus on these two). Or, as me and my friends called it, the “You’re either smart or stupid” class system. 

Intelligence should not determined by whether you’re taking Biology or Art as an elective but that is what we felt those years ago. It’s a pretty bad stigma and gross overgeneralization of students. The remark made by teachers may seem alarming to our non-Malaysian Steemians but they were made to students due to what they saw themselves - art stream students will be limited in their opportunities later on. 

Where We Come In

In the middle of a meeting with the gang.

So besides my final year animation project, there is another project that me, @nanawawa, @hanza96, and 7 other girls are working together on. We called ourselves Kiasu Management. Why kiasu? Because it means we don’t want to lose and are very extra!

In this subject, we have to create an event that fits the theme of edutainment. To ensure our event is a success, we have to make sure it insites some kind of change. And here we thought we could just sell food and call it a day, oh well…

As all of us are busy with our own final year project work, we had to get to doing this fast. There were many steps involved in the event planning so we got together and cracked heads to come up with...

Art Invasion!

Logo design courtesy of @hanza96

I’m kidding, that didn’t really happen but her words made a lot of sense. Art stream students have the potential to be influential enough to rule the world if they are aware of the skills they need to do that. Most of our humanities subjects had assured us that the media does have power in some way. As we (my team) are all in an art related courses (a mix of character animations majors, advertising majors, and a lone media arts majors), we collectively did some inward thinking and asked ourselves this question - what skills can give you a leg up in university and, eventually, in a career?

And the answer was entrepreneurship.

Bunting designs courtesy of @hanza96 

Particularly the soft skills taught as part of entrepreneurship. The skill to talk and present yourself and your projects is crucial in both university and in nearly all careers. The other effects of learning these skills could also help in getting students to be more involved and confident. This would be a perfect kind of skill to introduce to the secondary school kids. 

As you’re reading this, I’m sure you’re asking “Why just art stream students? Why not science stream as well because we’re not taught these skills either” 

We do this because we want to show art stream students that secondary school is not the end of the road. As a teenager, where you have no idea where life will take you, the ultimatum of streams deciding whether you have a future or not is depressing. A majority of us on this platform know that it isn’t the end of the world when you aren’t part of the D.E.A.L. (Doctor, Engineer, Architect, Lawyer) but these kids don’t know yet.

So we’d like to open their eyes.

Soft skills aren’t really a common skill that we’re taught here in Malaysia and while all students should have the opportunity to learn about practicing entrepreneurship, we felt that by teaching it to art stream students first, we are creating that change for our project. Our goal is to tackle the negative stigma art stream students face and to give them the confidence needed through learning entrepreneurship skills.   

Present and Future Plans 

While Art Invasion’s conception might have been due to satisfy the requirements needed in our university subject, the problems we identified we were very real and the want to help was genuine. What we hope from doing this project is that the Form 5 kids involved would take from what we can give to them in this project and make something good of themselves.

Right now, we’re still in the process of planning and executing the event. The goal date would either be the 17th or 24th of January, which is about a week or two from the date of publishing this post. 

It’s been a wild and interesting ride to get everything set up for the event. We’ve faced some pretty interesting challenges (right now we’re still in the middle of gaining the finances needed to fund the project) so far in order to get this event kicked off but much like the namesake of our group name…

We absolutely refuse to lose!

Early logo and event name design by my group mate, Puteri

Hope everyone enjoyed reading about this. Gotta give a shoutout to my groupmates for proving the beautiful designs and allowing me to share them and our work so far here on the platform. They are some of the best people to work with and I’m glad I grouped up with them for this project. 

Wish us luck in our event! And see you next post!

Gif animated by @zord189

Gif animated by @zord189

Banner design by @zomagic. Logo design by @cartoonistpandan