Academy For Democracy
LVS combines Research and Impact in effective ways which allow critical thinking ‘with’ the local stake-holders. LVS helps us reflect upon our position in an increasingly urbanized and globalized world while understanding the challenges faced by regional communities and their local cultures. Participants are encouraged to critically analyze the culture, environment and challenges of the site.
Conflict/Crisis Event
Participatory Research & Impact model for Arts, Social Science & the Humanities
Local Community
PROJECT BY ZAHRA HUSSAIN
CHILDREN ELDERS WOMEN LOCAL COUNCIL
Laajverd Visiting School is ten-day cross curricular and interdisciplinary intensive set up in a sites of prone/post conflict, crisis and disasters that brings together practitioners, academicians and local community to generate effective responses to the challenges by using participatory pedagogies for research and action. There is a rising need to revisit our approach to academia that contributes to critical awareness and sound co-shaping of our shared environment. Encouraging interdisciplnary academic discourse, Laajverd has initiated its visiting school that responds to conditions of ‘crises’. Crises are instants of shifting modalities – they mark points of change in a multilayered program. It is a specific period of time that is crucial in several ways of identification and determination of a system that is being regulated in an escalated force field. Combined systems of humans and nature are convoluted in terms of how they anticipate and respond to disturbed environments: disasters and conflict zones. The capacity to deal with the types of uncertainties and surprises requires innovative approaches, creative combinations of strategies, and the ability to adapt to the changing environment. The project sets out to explore these with the local stakeholders, environment and landscapes. This intensive invites creative and development faculty, students and field experts to join the visiting school in chalking out a more effective intervention and impact strategy along with rethinking models of development following the framework of SDGs. The equal participation of the local community and stakeholders ensures that the knowlege produced is well anchored in the local context.
For more information, lvs.laajverd.org laajverd@gmail.com
LVS provides a platform for dialogue, learning, understanding and sharing knowledge for a better future.
Poster by, Zahra Hussain Department of Geography
FEEDBACK
Academicians
LVS
NCA BAE
FACULTY STUDENTS
2015/18
Community Heritage Museums
Practitioners Knowlege Production Strengthen Local Knowlege
WWF HWF AKCSP BISP ITA
DOCUMENTATION & FIELD RESEARCH
Training/Skill-set Capacity Building
Q&A Forms Sketch Feildnotes
RAPID IDEATION PROBLEM ANALYSIS Discursive sessions
Seminars
Publications Posters
2014/15/16
2015
2015/17
Crafts workshop
Tour Guides
Children Games
LVS participants from Fine Arts and Design hold workshops with local craftspersons on ‘design thinking for contemporary markets’.
LVS participants conducted theater workshops to prepare local men as Tour Guides
LVS participants developed games with local children to a) Preserve dying folklore by incorporating stories in the games. b) Bring awareness around Disaster response by incorporating strategies in games. 2015/16/17
Indigenous Practices and Patterns Catalog
Workshops
LVS has initiated a catalog for archiving indigenous practices and patterns of living that have not been documented before. In 2015, in Kashmir, 62 indigenous practices and 110 living patterns were identified and compiled for IPPC. In 2016, Kaghan Valley was documented and in 2017, Gojal Valley was documented. The IPPC provides a strong anchor to develop projects in line with the local cultural landscape.
PROJECT PROPOSALS Proposals by Participants
LVS outreach program aims to protect and preserve local and indigenous knowleges by documenting the cultural landscape and develop spaces for artifacts of heritage significance. In 2015, Heritage Museum Janwai was set up in post-conflict area of Neelum Valley in Kashmir in collaboration with Local community. In 2018, Heritage Museum Laspur was set up in Laspur Valley in North West Pakistan in collaboration with the local community, AKRSP and Swiss Development Corporation.
Policy guidelines development
OUTREACH