State education policy to include creativity as focus area

The Karnataka government is mulling the addition of creativity as an important skill in the state education policy, Minister for Higher Education M C Sudhakar said on the second day of GAFX 2024, the state’s flagship animation, visual effects, gaming and comics (AVGC) summit. The government will consider suggestions given by experts during the summit to alter the education policy, and involve them in developing the industry further, he added.

Encouraging and fostering a creative mindset in students is essential before they can be trained to use technology-enabled tools like artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented reality to succeed in the AVGC industry, according to experts speaking at the event.

“We envision to position Karnataka as a global innovation leader in AVGC-XR technology and create a robust talent pool by transforming the state into a centre of excellence for AVGC-XR,” Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had said at the GAFX inauguration on Monday, with Deputy CM DK Shivakumar adding that the state will provide all possible assistance required for the industry to flourish.

In this spirit, the Karnataka Information Technology Venture Capital Fund (KITVEN), which is the IT & BT Ministry’s accelerator for early stage startups, announced a corpus of Rs 20 crore for the AVGC industry on Monday.

The state-backed venture capital fund will make equity investments worth Rs 0.5 crore to Rs 2 crore per company, and will be active for 10 years, with an option to extend for two more, focusing on early stage startups and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) engaged in the sector.

Two generative-AI enabled products were launched by startups for the AVGC industry on Tuesday. While Avataar’s Creator is a gen-AI platform for spatial storytelling that companies can use to enhance their product narratives, ScriptViz can be used by filmmakers, screenwriters, and directors to visualise written scripts through visual storyboards.