As educators and creative practitioners, we are grateful to the Teacher Plus team for inviting us to curate this issue on ‘Design and Learning’. We have tussled with this idea for a while and are always excited when we are nudged to articulate it and discuss it. Our attempt with this issue is to share learning experiences of our diverse group of contributors. Like flowers adorning a garland, our curation too needs a thread that ties it all in, gives it context and purpose. And for that, let’s take two steps back and see how we got here. Let us start with the post enlightenment, post industrial revolution practice of coercing educational learning for industrial purposes. Since the great exhibition of 1851 when colonized Indian crafts captured the imaginations of the colonizers, the intention of the British models of art education had two main objectives. Firstly, to develop the dexterous (Owen Jones’s 1856 text, The Grammar of Ornament as part of art education in India) skill amongst local population and secondly to preserve traditional forms of art of the colonies. ‘It was inevitable that the emergence of formalized art education in India was grounded in the philosophy of South Kensington Circle with a dual purpose of preserving India’s dying crafts and improving the quality of manufactured goods for the British market through the imposition of British methods of instruction.’[1] Language (like English) and Art (craft of making) were taught similarly by colonizers in India. It was about applying a curricular model across the board to bring a certain common level of understanding between colonies and colonizers. Did matters of administration bring forth the prioritizing of capital and consequence?Whether this systemic thinking continues to influence our way of modelling art and design education in post-colonial India is a question to ponder. Formal art education in India dates back to 1798 when a British resident, Sir Charles Malet, established the first western art school in Pune. The school allowed local painters to assist visiting British artists, thereby picking up colonial techniques, tools, and tastes. The first art school in India was opened in 1839 and was known as the Calcutta Mechanics Institution. The Calcutta Mechanics Institution was renamed as Calcutta School of Art in 1854. The Madras Art School was established in 1850. Sir Jamshedji Jijibhai School of Art and Industry (Sir J.J. School of Art) in Bombay opened in 1856. In 1875 the Mayo school in Lahore opened. The colonial model of visual arts education clearly demarcated the