Akshayee Shetty
About Akshayee Shetty
Akshayee Shetty is the co-founder/president of a charitable organisation called Ayathi Trust that ensures financial and livelihood independence to autistic people by tailoring customised cognitive & creative arts centric programs. She is an educator/artist, who is passionate about the triptych principles - 'Creative Learning', 'Collaborative Practices' and 'Exclusive and or Inclusive environments'. She is mostly intrigued about questions that mark the significance of the arts, experiences and relationships with respect to learning, for an overall development, thus breaking the myth that Autism cannot be trained to reach it's maximum potential. She is also extremely passionate about deciphering the nuances of art practices and pedagogical philosophies that will disrupt the systems of Public/Social Policies and help in creating a more user-friendly and uniquely innovative solutions thus designing specific environments to enable and empower people with Autism in India.
As an artist in Glasgow, her practice allowed individuals to develop social skills, networks and the confidence to pursue careers in art, whilst simultaneously collaborating with other artists to work with teens/adults from varied and vulnerable backgrounds within museums and school settings which lead to curation of exhibitions or making of films as a showcase. Today, she is the founder and director of Blue Olephant and the Sense Kaleidoscopes both of which aim towards engaging autistic children emotionally, socially and eventually make them employable in various art streams by creating opportunities and building the very culture along with providing a unique solution to the problem of closing the cognitive delays that are rampant in individuals with autism in India.
Awarded a full scholarship by the Scotland Scholarships Program 2005, a TEDx BMSCE Speaker, awarded the universal Harmony International Women's Day in 2018 and the Lead India Power Women Award in 2021 along with the Rotary Nation Builders Award 2021."