09/08/2026
Ngate Namza (Our Season) was a 3-day long Stop-motion Animation workshop at Panchayat Ghar, Sankoo, in Kargil District, with students from PM Shri Govt. Girls High School ghs_sankoo, Sankoo, that took place alongside the sā Ladakh Biennale 2026. The workshop was conducted by sonam Anarya , Arti Malik from Artreach India.
It emerged from the question: what if we become someone more-than-human and navigate the world from their perspective? They chose a character from their local ecology– imagining themselves as a butterfly, a poplar tree, an apricot tree, cloud, rain, water droplet, river, mountain, summer season, sun, moon, stars, sparrow, and more.
We used art games and exercises to playfully learn the technique, from Frames Per Second (fps), to stops in a stop-motion, to handling camera and the software. They also learnt story-boarding, story-telling, sound recording, lighting and set-production over the three days. In the animation film they enacted stories of two stark seasons in Sankoo valley– Summer and Winter, creating highly imaginative sets using foraged material from their surroundings like leaves, stones, mud, twigs, flowers, and others.
The students gave a title to their film in Purgi – ‘Ngate Namza’ // Our Season. They taught us a local Balti song that we all sang together and recorded to add to the film.
The workshop gave us a short glimpse into the cultural and ecological life of Kargil through the conversations with the students around seasons, their everyday life that revolves around it, the gender roles attached to harvesting in summers, their favorite food, stories of wild animals visiting the surrounding villages, the music and podcasts they listen to, and more.
Towards the end of the workshop we watched their final film in awe, munching snacks and reflecting on what they learnt over the three days. We parted with a high spirited dancing session, feeling the energy of these creative, confident and smart girls!
