UnBox Cultural Futures EMERGING TRENDS IN INDIA, 2015
Welcome to UnBox! UnBox started in 2011 as a festival in Delhi to celebrate emerging ideas across disciplines of art, culture, design, technology and social innovation, to foster collaboration and seed new ideas. The platform has since then grown to include a Fellowship programme, an Ideation Lab, Pop-up events and mini festivals. As a platform that seeks to focus on multiple facets of contemporary issues, UnBox highlights disruptive individuals and projects that are pushing boundaries of their practice. By showcasing the non-mainstream in real and authentic formats, UnBox attempts to seek out not only new answers but also uncover new questions. Here with our first cultural mapping effort, we are in the process of discovering new directions and conflicts that are emerging in contemporary India. In no ways exhaustive, this is our effort to celebrate the complexity of a culture in transition, of an emerging creative economy. We hope that this becomes a starting point for forming new collaborations, discovering new content and inspiring new debates that can come to fruition at UnBox 2016.
This publication is not for commercial use, and acknowledges the rights of the owners of images used. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs You are free to share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work under the following conditions: • Attribution: The festival (UnBox) requires that you must attribute the work in the manner specified (but not in any way that suggests that the festival endorses you or your use of the work). • Noncommercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. ©UnBox 2015 www.unboxfestival.com
Inside
Enterprises & Social Responsibility
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Connected Communities
12
Makers in India
18
Cultural Ethnography
24
(Indi)Food
30
We the People
36
(Re)Appropriating Space
42
Multiplay
48
Clean India
54
Engaging the Past
60
Accessible Healthcare
66
Art without Lineage
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01 Enterprises & Social Responsibility
Enterprises in India are juggling economic viability and social responsibility - but who’s doing it best? How may we define the metrics of such hybrid models of operation? Traditional beneficiaries of social innovation schemes have graduated to become an important market for emerging enterprises, and often also stakeholders in this process of change. The public sector is no longer the prime driver of development; and the private sector, driven in part by the new Corporate Social Responsibility guidelines, has evolved its approach from philanthropy to an integrated and sustainable social business strategy.
NGOs and social enterprises have also increasingly realized the need to be economically viable and investment friendly; like start-ups, they compete for funds on conventional grounds of scale, replicability and reach. Boundaries are blurring. For-profit and not-forprofit businesses often operate in tandem under the same banner. Do enterprises still need to decide which side they’re on? Which is the ideal operating model? 7
Š Honhaar Bharat Skill India Mission: http://goo.gl/RYrRii
National Skill Development Corporation
Quality Education and Skills Training (QUEST) Alliance
NSDC is a not-for-profit company and a public private partnership set up to fulfill the Skill India Mission. It aims to promote skill development by catalyzing the creation of large, quality, for-profit vocational institutions in India. Its approach is to develop partnerships with multiple stakeholders, attract significant private investment and to ensure that its funds are “recirculating� loans or equity rather than grants.
QUEST Alliance is a not-for-profit trust that focuses on researchled innovation and advocacy in the field of teaching and learning, often using Information and Communication Technology (ICT). It serves as a unique platform where the interest and capabilities of NGOs and the private sector converge to demonstrate and enable scalable and replicable solutions.
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Š Janalakshmi: https://youtu.be/JXie9h9b5pQ
Janalakshmi
Dasra
Janalakshmi, designed as a ‘social business,’ has a 2-tier structure, comprising of a not-forprofit holding company called Janalakshmi Social Services and a for-profit operating company called Janalakshmi Financial Services. JSS promotes enterprises in urban financial inclusion and urban affordable housing, while JFS provides financial services to the urban underserved.
Dasra connects social entrepreneurs and philanthropists, and provides strategic training and mentorship to NGOs and social enterprises in order to drive large scale social change.
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02 Connected Communities
In the density and conflux of India, technology is bringing people together like never before. What are their rules of engagement? Social media and a host of technology driven start-ups are creating new definitions of communities and connecting people who might have not had access otherwise. Communication over an accessible internet is facilitating knowledge transfer and an increase in transparency. Technology is also thus acting as a powerful means for civic engagement and for mobilizing the public. The internet, however, is not free. Like any other tool, it is controlled by those in power and in their hands it has been censored, manipulated
and used to persecute. Equally, it is the responsibility of creators -and users- to ensure selfcensorship, accountability and respect for varied perspectives. Digital tools of communication have been marveled at and fawned over. Perhaps it is time we look at them a little more critically: How may we balance both the good and the bad which come with connected communities? What might be the codes of conduct and rules of engagement in this new social context, that is beyond national boundaries? 13
Š Digital Green: http://goo.gl/n5vO9o
Digital Green
NextDrop
Digital Green is a not-forprofit working to improve agriculture, health and nutrition across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. It collaborates with existing social organizations and works to amplify their impact by employing technology. The Digital Green platform enables rural communities to create and share videos to drive wider adoption of locally relevant practices.
NextDrop is a Bangalore based start-up that sends out SMS alerts to citizens about water supply. It also forwards the real time feedback it gets from users to utility providers in order to increase transparency and resource efficiency.
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KITES Š Babitha George
KITES
@UNBOX LABS 2014
A collaborative project between Invisible Flock and Quicksand, KITES connects people across geographies through stories and shared experiences, using SMS as a medium for communication. Using text only responses to curated questions, KITES offers up a sparse snapshot of another life in a one-to-one exchange, challenging preconceptions, exploring differences and similarities.
m.Paani m.Paani is a mobile based coalition loyalty program that enables communities living at the bottom of the pyramid to earn points every time they spend on network operators, FMCGs, retail, etc. These points can be exchanged to avail development rewards such as safe water, education, health care and energy products. m.Paani won the Hult Prize in 2011 and is currently being implemented in Mumbai.
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03 Makers in India
Is the emerging Maker movement going to be friends or foes with India’s massive informal economy and its long-established institutions of handicraft? The global Maker movement has found its way to India, supported by a growing network of online communities, offline makerspaces and young start-ups. The focus on learning-by-doing and skill building goes beyond the digital to encompass traditional vocational skills such as woodworking, metalworking and electrical fabrication. In this context, both India’s handicraft industry as well as its large body of semi-skilled and skilled labour can be seen as significant partners in
the movement. Despite this opportunity, the common artisan crafter is sadly struggling and the traditional Indian disdain towards manual labour is indisputable. Meanwhile, the Indian government plans to power industrial growth by encouraging Indian and foreign manufacturers to ‘Make in India’. The success of this campaign, however, depends on the ready availability of workers needed to run these shiny new manufacturing units. After all, someone needs to be doing the making. 19
Digital Craft Š UnBox Festival: https://goo.gl/MbWC21
Handcrafted Digital @UNBOX 2014
The intersection of traditional and emerging makers was one of the core focus areas of UnBox 2014. Working at the integration of digital technologies into art and craft practices, the Digital Craft series of workshops at the festival explored the use of conductive ink and block printing to create touch-sensitive surfaces with audio responses. The workshop was anchored by Justin Marshall, a professor of digital craft at Falmouth University, UK, who collaborated with Rajasthani block printers, textile design students and Arduino enthusiasts.
Lab Craft: Digital Adventures in Contemporary Craft Lab Craft was a touring exhibition organized by the Crafts Council, UK between 2010 and 2012. It featured makers who combine technical mastery of tools, material and aesthetic sensibility, with cutting-edge digital technologies.
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It’s My Story © Sajith Gopinath
It’s My Story
Maker Fest 2015
A project developed by Sajith Gopinath and presented at the Maker Fest, it created a narrative experience using traditional storytelling techniques interlaced with modern methods of production and rapid prototyping. The team 3D printed the bust of an audience member. A finger puppeteer-artisan in consultation with the project team then designed the character and made the body of the puppet to match the bust. This character was then incorporated into a traditional story setting.
Funded by the Motwani Jadeja Family Foundation and organized at CEPT University in Ahmedabad in January 2015, Maker Fest was the largest yet showcase of the Maker movement in India. CEPT also has one of the country’s 9 FabLabs, connected to MIT’s global network of makerspaces.
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04 Cultural Ethnography
With a fair range of projects documenting contemporary Indian culture, has it become easier to pinpoint what it means to be an Indian?
Indians are getting nostalgic: about the India of their childhood, about the other India, and about an India they never saw. Perhaps in an attempt to describe India beyond the typical markers of culture, young urban Indians are creating and sharing cultural archives, and employing a variety of new media to do so. These projects celebrate previously unacknowledged but integral aspects of Indian culture; in a sense they
highlight the extraordinary in the ordinary. By taking a step back and looking at these episodes from an objective lens, the authors offer valuable and often joyful insights on contemporary Indian people and their daily lives. The trend also highlights the sheer range of stories that India has to offer. Is it this very multiplicity that makes it impossible to agree to a national identity - or does it in fact exemplify Indian-ness? 25
Š Medicine Corner: https://goo.gl/YGLBKi
Velowala
Medicine Corner
Velowala, a Quicksand Labs project initiated and guided by John Thackara (Doors of Perception), is a rich media archive that documents the eco-system of bicyclebased commerce (or velocommerce) in India through images, sounds, films, interviews and critiques. The project seeks to sensitize people to the fact that bike-based commerce is a viable, flourishing livelihood for millions in India and other developing economies.
Medicine Corner is a multidisciplinary programme which explores India’s many cultures of medicine, healing and well-being. Through exhibitions, music, media arts and live events across the country, the project introduces audiences to an aesthetically seductive, intellectually rich mix of art and science. The project is curated by Ratan Vaswani and supported by the Wellcome Trust.
@UNBOX 2013
@UNBOX 2014
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Indian Memory Project Š Chetan Roy: http://goo.gl/FU9nop
Live Memory Project
@UNBOX LABS 2014
The Live Memory Project celebrates, documents and shares voices that allow citizens to engage and interact with various aspects of the city. These stories help build deeper connections, foster empathy and provide new textures to the landscape of our cities.
Indian Memory Project The Indian Memory Project is an online, curated, visual and narrative based archive that traces a history of the Indian subcontinent via photographs and letters found in personal archives.
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05 (Indi) Food
The search for a modern, contemporary yet local cuisine is dominating the dining table. What is Indian food like today?
The movement against homogeneity has found ground with food consumers and producers, who are enthusiastically exploring the range and diversity of Indian cuisine. At the same time, larger concerns about food security and personal well-being mean that the same enthusiasts are also increasingly questioning where their food comes from and what it represents. They are concerned
about the people who grow and process their food, the technologies they use, and the longterm impact they leave. At the forefront are chefs across urban centers who are documenting food heritage and experimenting with fresh, traditional ingredients. In the process they are evolving a new kind of Indian cuisine, while also opening up the debate on what it was and what it could be. 31
Š Nesfas: http://goo.gl/Uqjowz
North East Slow Food and Agrobiodiversity Society (Nesfas) Nesfas accords importance to both the pleasure gained through good food as well as traditional food systems and indigenous agrobiodiversity. It empowers local communities to celebrate and defend their diverse food and agricultural practices and influence food policies. Nesfas will host the Indigenous Terra Madre 2015 in Shillong, where representatives of indigenous communities from around the world will discuss the relevance of their food production knowledge.
Centre For Interdisciplinary Studies (CINTDIS) CINTDIS works to conserve indigenous species of rice, and campaigns against biopiracy and the threat large multinationals pose to biodiversity. Its founder, Dr. Debal Deb, has planted over a thousand varieties of rice and documented and published their characteristics to protect them against biopiracy.
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© Gypsy Kitchen: https://goo.gl/CToU13
Gypsy Kitchen The Gypsy Kitchen is a food and recipe heritage conservation project which documents home cooking traditions. It also raises supplementary income for local cooks by curating intimate meals for interested guests.
Sattviko A quick service restaurant chain which offers Sattvik variants of popular American, Mexican, Italian and Indian dishes. The Sattvic diet places emphasis on seasonal foods, and relates to ayurveda and yoga.
Food, Bioregions, Design A partnership between Konstfack (Sweden) and John Thackara, this summer 2015 workshop will explore how design can help people interact with living and food systems by crafting and testing small actions that may effect larger social, economic and ecological systems.
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06 We the People
The balance of powers is shifting, but is the ruling class going to pay attention to or whitewash the writing on the wall? The 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments were passed by the Parliament in 1992, but their mandate of local self governance for rural and urban India has truly come of age in the last few years. A growing tribe of new social initiatives have been informing and empowering citizens to have a larger say in planning, policy, political and governance issues, while also working towards creating and strengthening an accountable and responsive government system. The meteoric success of the Aam Aadmi Party
in Delhi is largely based on their resolutions of social, economic and political inclusion, and the intriguing political climate since then has spawned a generation of young people who are deeply involved and opinionated about their government and political systems. Democratic, decentralized governance is a right of the Indian people, and they’re demanding it louder than ever before. Is this India’s political awakening? Or will this enthusiasm wane once the novelty wears off? Are those in power sincere about facilitating change? 37
Š Jana Natya Manch: http://goo.gl/GjN7Qu
MyGov.in MyGov is an innovative platform of the Indian government which works to promote participatory governance and build a partnership between citizens and its departments. The platform lets citizens share their opinions and insights through discussions, polls, talks and blogs, and also encourages them to undertake tasks. In collaboration with Google, MyGov has recently launched an open competition to design a mobile application for the prime minister’s office.
Jana Natya Manch Jana Natya Manch, or Janam, is a Delhi based street theatre group which addresses topical events and social phenomenon through its work, and sees theatre as a means of voicing anger and forming public opinion.
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Š The Ballot: http://goo.gl/9JRncI
Legislative Assistants to Members of Parliament (LAMP) Fellowship The LAMP Fellowship places a legislative assistant to work with an MP for 11 months. The fellowship introduces LAMP Fellows to the working of Parliament and the legislative process, thus creating a platform for young Indians to engage with policy making at the national level. The LAMP Fellowship was conceptualized by PRS Legislative Research, which seeks to strengthen the legislative process by making it better informed, more transparent and participatory.
Centre for Civil Society (CCS) CCS advances social change through public policy and promotes choice and accountability across private and public sectors. To translate policy into practice, it engages with policy and opinion leaders through research, pilot projects and advocacy.
The Ballot The Ballot is an online visual compendium of information about India’s democratic and political system. It was prepared during the run-up to the 2014 national election.
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07 (Re) Appropriating Space
Who is the city for? Urban Indians are demanding the right to the city, and the right to express themselves in the city.
In 2014, India’s urban population stood at 410 million, 32% of the total population. The United Nations predicts that it will exceed 800 million by 2050, when it is expected to amount to about half of India’s people. This rapid urbanisation is characterized by inadequate and unreliable urban infrastructure, and the deficit, on account of the incapacity of understaffed and underfunded urban local bodies, is here to stay. In this context, citizen led urban renewal seems
like the way forward. Self initiated and self funded projects are important, but so is demanding and aiding the government in building new or revitalizing old infrastructures. India’s future development and quality of life depends on how this imminent urbanization will come about - on how we build, maintain and improve our cities - and on how much ownership we take of them. How may we add value to and design purpose for underutilized or abandoned urban spaces in India? 43
Š MOD Institute: http://goo.gl/7GF43n
URBZ
@UNBOX 2013
URBZ is an experimental urban research and action collective based in Mumbai. It believes that residents are experts in their neighborhoods, and communicates this knowledge to policymakers, urban planners, architects and realestate developers via collaborative workshops, hands-on research projects, urban forms and concepts, and web content.
MOD Institute The MOD Institute is an interdisciplinary urban action and research institute based in Berlin and Bangalore which visualizes urban processes and challenges so as to inform open-source, multi-authored and open participation and intervention in Indian cities. Its pilot program is NextBangalore, an open platform which collects public opinion on the future of Bangalore.
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Š Jana Urban Space Foundation: http://goo.gl/FW1ESf
Pedestrian
Jana Urban Space Foundation
Pedestrian, a project by The Busride, examines the architectural, cultural and professional opportunities of creating pedestrian urban experiences which connect various elements of the Indian street.
The Jana Urban Space Foundation is a not-forprofit which supports government agencies by preparing spatial plans for regional, municipal, and neighbourhood levels. It also offers integrated design and implementation solutions to improve the urban design of public spaces, as well as technical expertise on policy reforms.
@UNBOX 2013
Raahgiri On Raahgiri Day, organized every Sunday across various neighbourhoods in Delhi, authorities close a network of streets to cars so that they become “open� to the public.
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08 Multiplay
How do we reconcile the sobering reality of the vast majority of the Indian population with the idea of experimental playfulness?
The notion of play is quite ingrained in Indian culture and thus in the spaces that people occupy in Indian cities as well. A lot of what one sees in Indian cities, especially on the street, falls outside strict rules of organization and lawfulness, thus making them playful. There exists enormous opportunity for gamifying aspects of daily life in a manner that engages all senses. The gaming industry in India is today seeking to reconcile immense talent and imagination
with the nature of daily work in outsourced setups for foreign companies. How can the tragedy of the current work culture within this industry be overcome to explore new opportunities that nurture talent? Can independent game developers who are outside this system be empowered to be more significant shapers of the future? Can we think of play as a way of exploring buried opportunity amongst talented young people and creating a new reality? 49
Antariksha Sanchar Š GamesLAB http://goo.gl/9OCBPt
Antariksha Sanchar (AS) Quicksand GamesLab is an exploratory research group that collaborates with external partners to create playful experiences in media and technology. Their WIP, Antariksha Sanchar, is a speculative science-fiction adventure video game shaped by Indian history, culture and mythology. AS is India’s first game-led transmedia product, extended over a graphic album, merchandise and audiovisual performances.
Of Games @Khoj Khoj is a not-for-profit, contemporary arts organization based in Delhi. Its annual residency, Of Games, explores the idea of game and play through the lens of contemporary art practice, and looks at games as tools of social engagement and change making.
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Somewhere Š Studio Oleomingus: http://goo.gl/FONG5v
Somewhere Indian-American Studio Oleomingus is currently developing Somewhere, a first person exploration game set in an alternate re-imagining of colonial India. Inspired by nonsense poetry and the architecture of Le Corbusier, the game allows players to continuously move between characters, thus offering differing points of view.
Computer Gaming Across Cultures Organized by the British Council and featuring speakers from West Virginia University (USA), Jawaharlal Nehru University (IN), and Bangor University (UK), this symposium discussed gaming and its interactions with different facets of contemporary culture.
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09 Clean India
How can we push long-lasting people-driven change to ensure a ‘clean’ India? There is a sanitation crisis in India, with over half the population forced to open-defecate due to a lack of adequate facilities, infrastructure, and even a basic understanding of the importance of healthy sanitation habits. There is now a resurgence of focus on these issues in light of the current government’s call to action. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is a national campaign by the Government of India to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country and provide adequate sanitation facilities by 2019. While the focus on infrastructure is
admirable, this cannot be viable in isolation. How can adequate attention be driven around invisible aspects of the system that direly need innovation? This includes government attitudes, behaviour change amongst citizens as well as addressing fecal sludge and solid waste management. How can sustainable change become real in a space that is ridden with myriad issues at local and national levels? How do we ensure that citizens are aware of how their daily actions impact large system-level failures? 55
The Ugly Indian Š TEDxBangalore: https://youtu.be/tf1VA5jqmRo
Trash Trail
The Ugly Indian
Trash Trail is a bus tour which follows the journey of waste through Bangalore. It helps participants understand their waste and its relationship to the waste of the whole city. The tour is organized by Daily Dump, a social enterprise which designs and sells waste segregation products, composters and books.
The Ugly Indian is a public social media campaign that encourages citizens to assume responsibility for the cleanliness of their physical environment. Spearheaded by an anonymous group of people who organize clean-up drives, the platform features beforeand-after photographs and success stories.
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Š Project Samman: http://goo.gl/pj7R7a
Project Sammaan @UNBOX 2014
Project Sammaan is a partnership between design, government, and empirical research agencies working to provide a new, holistically re-imagined model for urban slum sanitation facilities in India. It reviews business models, architectural designs and communication interventions of these facilities to provide a safer, more hygienic user experience in the hopes of enacting open-defecation behavioral change. The project was led by Quicksand Design.
e-Catalogue for Individual Household Toilets The e-Catalogue is an Android and flash-based mobile and desktop application which gives users the opportunity to design toilets from the ground up to fit their needs and their budget. It has been developed by the Government of India’s Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation with the American charitable organization Water For People.
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10 Engaging the Past
How can we look to the future, yet remember, acknowledge and respect our past?
India has a long and storied history, and architectural and cultural heritage. Most Indians know and accept this, but in a vague, unconscious manner. It is crucial that we understand and engage with our past in order to arrive at a better, more sustainable future. And, in the context of the prevalent apathy, it is even more imperative that we generate awareness, affection and pride for our
shared culture today so as to secure it for tomorrow. How can we reinterpret and recontextualize the past in order to make it relevant? What might be newer ways of consuming and engaging with our heritage? Narratives and experiences can make meaning and compel people in a way that academic knowledge cannot. How can we tell better stories? 61
Virasat-e-Khalsa Š Shailan Parker
Nizamuddin Renewal Powered by a nonprofit public-private partnership between various agencies led by the Aga Khan Foundation, the Nizamuddin Renewal project is revitalizing and unifying the three historical sites of Humayun’s Tomb, Nizamuddin Basti and Sunder Nursery into one unique heritage precinct. It is notable for combining conservation with environmental and socioeconomic development while working with local communities and stakeholders.
Virasat-e-Khalsa The Virasat-e-Khalsa in Anandpur Sahib celebrates 500 years of Sikh history and the culture of Punjab. The museum represents Sikh history through installations, theatrical elements, and show-based experiences that evoke emotional and spiritual responses. The narrative combines traditional arts and crafts with modern technology, light and sound systems, working towards the larger goal of a renewed and relevant understanding of the spiritual message of Sikh gurus today.
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Š Stories in a Song: http://goo.gl/5hRXkH
Stories in a Song Conceived and researched by Shubha Mudgal and Aneesh Pradhan, Stories in a Song is a collection of seven short pieces that present various Indian forms of music. The songand-dance performances feature dramatic accounts of music-making and the struggles faced by musicians. At the intersection of theatre, music, dance, history, culture and literature, the project serves as an engaging and exciting medium for the public to connect with classical Indian music tradition.
Terminal 2, Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport The new Mumbai airport terminal, inaugurated in 2014, features 7,000 works of art by 1,500 Indian artists, and has been described as “India’s largest public art program.” The terminal exhibits include contemporary 3D installations, video animations, and ancient artifacts dating back to the 10th century. The gallery space has been curated by Rajeev Sethi.
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11 Accessible Healthcare
How can new mediums and technologies enable access to affordable healthcare in India? While healthcare challenges continue to remain prominent across India, there are several projects that are challenging obsolete and orthodox practices to enable new paradigms of locally-relevant, systemic solutions at the grassroots level. Some of them use communication design in bottom-up, contextspecific ways that build on vernacular knowledge and create awareness around health and hygiene among backward communities. Some others utilize tech-penetration and the ability to hack things locally to create empowering solutions
for grassroots workers, in severely resourceconstrained contexts. These projects also shift the onus from being an expert prescribing solutions to a facilitator who empathetically cocreates a solution that is owned by the health workers who are meant to implement it. How can this new way of thinking about healthcare access become scalable and sustainable? How can values of hacking and local innovations become embedded within the massive bureaucratic structures of healthcare provision in the diverse contexts of India? 67
Mobile Kunji Š Codesign / BBC Media Action : http://goo.gl/PXD3EH
Mobile Kunji
Menstrupedia
Under the Kilkari maternal healthcare programme, the government sends out SMS alerts and automated calls to registered mothers in rural India. They are also visited by community health workers, who use Mobile Kunji as an audio-visual job aid to support interpersonal communication and provide standardized, credible information.
Menstrupedia is a resource guide about menstruation and helps girls and women stay healthy and active during menstruation. It delivers informative and entertaining content through different media, and aims to spread awareness about menstruation to shatter myths around the subject.
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National Deworming Day Š Quicksand
Clock Sense Clock Sense is a low cost vital statistics screening tool which can be used by frontline health workers and volunteers with minimal medical training to actively screen large populations and reduce stress on state healthcare systems. The prototype was developed by Frugal Digital, a research group that creates digital solutions for low resource settings.
National Deworming Day Government agencies are increasingly employing creative studios to work on large scale public health programs. Quicksand Design is bringing a human centered design approach to communication for the National Deworming Day, which will touch over 230 million children in the next couple of years.
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12 Art without Lineage
How do we approach artistic selfexpression through non-traditional mediums, while also making art more inclusive? A group of young Indian artists are questioning traditional boundaries between disciplines, and are increasingly using new media and mediums to express themselves and to connect with their audience. While traditionally art has been the stronghold of a few, artists are exploring narratives and mediums that are grounded in local realities, whilst simultaneously engaging and learning from a new global alternative. These efforts also attempt to move art outside of galleries into more
inclusive spaces like the streets, with their own unique language, allowing for diverse expressions in a place like India. How can we encourage legitimisation of these new ways of creating and consuming art? How can tech-enabled digital mediums become part of the mainstream, and further enable participatory means of self-expression? How can this lack of genres and traditional slots become ways of including and allowing for new audiences and creators? 73
Š Amitesh Grover: http://goo.gl/5pACJM
Antariksha Sanchar @UNBOX 2012
Antariksha Sanchar is a an interdisciplinary performance that interprets the history of flight and the representation of aircrafts in mythology, science and imagination. A collaboration between studios of dance, art, architecture and music, it is led by Jayalakshmi Eshwar, BLOT, Anagram Architects, CellDSGN, Sattyananda and Mia Morikawa.
Amitesh Grover Amitesh builds performapedia (sites of knowledge) through curation, interactivity, installation, site-visits, art-games, performance, digital art and archival strategies. His work straddles mediums, genres, and disciplines; he has collaborated with curators, scientists, philosophers, hackers, gamers, artists and stockbrokers among others.
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St+ART Festival Š Hendrik ECB Beikirch: http://goo.gl/RsK1Y9
Live Room by Sin;drome @UNBOX 2013
Live Room is an online concert venue designed by Shivnakaun Studios for experimentation and collaboration between musicians, artists and performers. The performers and the audience meet from different parts of the world via the internet. Sin:drome has featured artists from varying disciplines such as sound, music, architecture, digital drawing, photography, and live visual performance.
St+ART Festival St+ART is an urban art festival that promotes street art and provides a collaborative platform for artists from all over the world to express themselves. The artwork is located in urban villages and other emerging neighbourhoods which makes culture accessible to an otherwise excluded audience.
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