Starting 2012, the TNUA Centre for Traditional Arts (CTA) initiated a series of field courses, including indigenous boat making, bark cloth making, banana fiber crafts, ritual parades etc.; the course of ‘Natural Dyeing’ was one of them. These courses aimed to bring students out of the classroom to learn from the soil and different people who give life to traditional arts, and to learn how traditional arts are related to the society and their generation. The 2013 course of ‘Natural Dyeing’, conducted with many partners, was divided into three main stages.

Many of us may have seen or bought indigo products from market. Seldom do we have the privilege to explore the beauty and hardship of a craftsmanship, know the process and knowledge of it from school. For the semester of Spring 2019, there is a course "Blue Across Boarders", which provided students a brief understanding of indigo, from plants, process of making indigo dye to dyeing, also provided them a chance to witness the process and experimented with dyeing by themselves in school.