The Beginnings..

There's a cluster of villages in Rasulabad, 90 km from Kanpur in UP, India.   It is pristine, simple and quaint with very warm people, aesthetic homes decorated with traditional art, yet amidst a difficult and infra-structurally deprived environment. 

We first visited these villages in early March when we ran the Jugaad workshop in collaboration with students of KTH, Sweden and Aalto University, Finland.

We recognized at the time across all ages, an eagerness to learn and a desire to innovate that I believe is inherent in each of us. It's whether or not we have the tools to pursue that desire.  















Last week we launched an initiative to run a set of 4 Design Innovation workshops there. At the core of its conceptualization as shown, was the guiding principle to involve and include all levels, ages and interests of the village.  

That most of the workshops will be led by our very own Masters and Ph.D students of the Design Program at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, is exciting. We are supported by both Vinodji who hails from the next village and Bharatji, both from the Media Center at IITK.

An article on Tagore's Sriniketan is inspiring indeed as we launch this, especially the last few lines:
  

While villages can gain from creative collaboration with people from the city, cities have to learn the value of physical labour from villages. 
Tagore's work at Sriniketan is a valuable reminder of how the ideals of village self-reliance and urban-rural co-operation must belong in our imaginations of the future.

15 April, 2015

From Structure to Shape...

The core team met for the second time day before. The workshop leads came with their thoughts and overall structures for their respective workshops.

'Toys from Trash' will be run using content created by Dr. Arvind Gupta and available on his website. 'Intro to Design' will use content created by Jhumkee Iyengar and run successfully couple of years ago in rural Maharashtra. 'Multi Jugaad' was a concept that emerged from a Jugaad workshop at IITK couple of months ago, in collaboration with students from KTH, Sweden and Aalto University, Finland. It was presented as a side note at the end of their presentation by Amit Kundal and his team, that sounded very promising and we wished to explore it further. And Sharmila Sen from Kalyani, West Bengal has been training Adivasi women in cross stitch for a while and this is an attempt to run a workshop for women using those experiences. 

Kulwant Singh will lead 'Toys from Trash', Shweta Nair 'Intro to Design', Amit Kundal 'Multi Jugaad' and Sharmila 'Jute Kantha Cross Stitch', assisted by Mohit Tewari. Piyush, Pulkit, Koel and others have signed up to co-facilitate. And Tatha will document - which is why he's already missing from this photo!

Vinodji came from the village cluster. The harvesting season may create a bit of a conflict he thought, however they've begun the enrollment drive.

We have decided to visit there this weekend to meet the prospective attendees, gauge alternative and suitable locations to conduct these as well as to stay there - did I mention we are planning to stay overnight and Kulwant will cook chicken for us? :)
Vinodji also requested that we give a letter from IITK to the local police station at Rasulabad so they are aware of what this group from outside is suddenly doing in this village!

Workshop leaders today presented their overall plans for the 2 days. The next step will be to detail out the exact activities, roles and create our materials lists.

Very happy to be working with my last year's students again!

20 April, 2015

Preparatory and Planning Visit

We set out to Rasulabad on Saturday with 8 sleepy people who had partied late the previous night. Mr. Kalidas (on left) and Vinodji both from Rasulabad, traveled with us from IITK.

Village hospitality truly warms the heart with recollections of when this used to be 'Indian hospitality', before we all got so busy in our city lives.

We started with customary visits and sweets at the village elder's homes: Kalidasji's 'didi' (elder sister) and Subhashji's homes. Some women brought samples of their handiwork to show us, skillfully and lovingly made on waste materials.




And different from us techno-literates, we experienced the word of mouth communication mode, as our students went from person to person, home to home explaining what we are setting out to do. Word began to spread gradually and they also began to get challenged with thought-provoking 'what's in it for me?' questions, particularly from adults who will take time away from their work and who are essentially skill focused. It helped us refocus and reconsider to design for a more customer-centric delivery.


And Kulwant strove to recruit young as you can see.

Some also asked us the pertinent question of what had come of the projects we were to work on last time, like the Sarkanna. We decided to take our revised design to show them, when we come next time.

On my past visit and just on a hunch, I had taken bits of jute and threads with me as you see and handed them to interested people there, asking them to create something on their own by the time we came back again.It was wonderful to see on this visit their inherent talent and creativity in some of their handiwork, the brown piece in particular, made with both artistic expression as well as completeness.

        

We next scouted for the right location where 4 workshops could be co-located yet apart.

Vinodji took us to their Babaji's ashram area. Babaji (on left) promised to get 4 areas cleared and prepared for us to sit in our 4 groups. Prashantji had done some legwork on enrollments and Subhashji offered to complete it.


Interest in the upcoming activity had started gathering by now.

We completed our discussions and planning of our next steps. Specifically, we felt the need to tailor the adult men's workshop better to connect with their respective professions.

We returned back via the police station, seeking permission to conduct our workshops at Rasulabad in 5 days time, as well as to stay there overnight on the night of 30th April.

We all feel very positive about this unique venture and I am personally very heartened to see the team getting immersed with a 'can-do' sense of involvement. It is my belief that they will themselves grow in the process and also spread the belief so aptly expressed by Nobel Laureate Herb Simon that says, 'Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones'.

As we realized that day, we are there as much to learn from our villages as to teach. May we all grow in this spirit of collaboration.

25 April, 2015

The Dress Rehearsal

We decided we needed two 'near the end' meetings with everyone, one on Tuesday morning, in time to wake up the mentor gang in the studio in which they work and sleep and the other on Wednesday night, right before our Thursday early morning departure. 

Each workshop team had to present details of their plans, materials list and backup plans for when things go wrong as well as clarity on who's doing what. 

Shweta presented the 'Intro to Design' workshop for youth, with objective: Introduce the concept of design to youth and empower them to think with an open mind to address immediate scenarios around them.  

She described moving from individual to pair to team thinking, using their imagination and making objects of their inspiration. Some of the key learning elements she had envisioned and planned for were the difference between art and design, about form, nature as inspiration and about empathy. 
And they had an impressive set of visuals to inspire and trigger thinking. Siddharth, a recent joinee in the team is gearing up and getting ready to work with the youth. 

Amit has taken on leadership not just of his Multi-Jugaad workshop for adult men but also coordination with village leads, the police personnel and several other administrative requirements. 

After our last visit to the village, we  were a little taken aback by potential attendees' queries on why they should miss a day of work and attend our workshop. It certainly got us thinking. After careful deliberations and discussions within the group, Amit, Pulkit and Pankaj presented an impressive and contextually relevant set of workshop activities which we hope will not just engage participants but also trigger their thinking into everyday problem solving in their setting. And we also decided to minimize the use of the word 'jugaad' as we realized it has too many different connotations for different people and has the potential to fragment the thought process. 

Their workshop objective: 

To sensitize village residents to the concept of local innovation. To imbibe in them the confidence to take forward their learning from the workshop and adopt it in their daily life. And to make them understand alternate uses of existing everyday products. Their visuals also were a well thought out collection of inspirations and triggers. Some interesting exercises they had envisioned were: alternate uses of everyday throwaway items, such as create an alternative device other than an umbrella to protect from the sun, design a portable object that women could use for toilet privacy etc.

Kulwant and Koel prepared as they presented their 'Toys from Trash' workshop. This is a new area of work for them and they are understandably improvising as they try to learn about toys, trash, toys from trash and children!

All I could get from them was a lot of verbalization of their overall plan that you see here. But I have confidence they will run a great workshop as they have the passion.

We have had a lot of uncertainties around Sharmila's ability to be here but finally it looks like she will arrive on Tuesday evening. We look forward to her presence and the samples like these shown here as well as raw materials she will bring to conduct the Jute and Cross Stitch workshop with women.  

Mohit, who will work with her, has prepared a color circle visual with which he hopes to explain color sensitization and color selection to the participants of this workshop.  

Pankaj was allocated the task of certificates and Piyush the badges for participants. Pulkit took on the brave responsibility of rounding up all the materials list from all workshop leaders and coordinating with Raja, the dependable coordinator of our department. 

We also made plans for 'minor' details like breakfast, lunch, dinner, sleeping arrangements, preparedness for mosquitoes and other creepy crawlies and not to miss the famous and promised Kulwant Fried Chicken (KFC). 

Vinodji suggested we stay in the local school premises where we could cook our chicken undisturbed amidst a predominantly vegetarian village. And he graciously invited us to his home for lunch on the second day. 


28 April, 2015

The Night before the day after....

We met at 8 pm the day before our departure for a quick meeting. Mohit and Sharmila (Nani) coordinated prior, to understand their workshop, decide goals and have an overall plan. The whole team saw some of the samples she had brought along to get an idea of the women's workshop. Siddharth wanted to switch teams to join the Jute workshop but of course we did not let him :)

Our side table looks full now with stationary and other materials, lots of water bottles and quite a bit of trash!
We unfortunately lost Piyush to a paper writing commitment and though I was a bit concerned, I was assured by a confident Shweta that 'we will manage fine'. 

Kulwant and Koel were missing in action as they were busy planning and buying among other things, Maggi noodles for our lunch the next day, to be cooked on a wood stove. They arrived just as we adjourned, with great confidence in their delivery the next day. 

Bharatji informed us that we needed gate passes as we tried to sail out of the main gate the next morning with 20 long pieces of bamboo we were carrying with us, along with our cameras, white boards etc.. That set several of us spinning for the next two hours as we tried to tie up these administrative details in preparation for our departure.

We called for 4 cars as our entourage of people and goods grew and then we revised our departure time from 8 am to 7 am and then to 6 am! I waited to see when we would actually depart with the professed all-nighter by most of the mentor gang. 

Here's to a wonderful and successful workshop full of learning, fun, enrichment and fulfillment!

29 April, 2015

Day One of Immersion and Learning...

We took awhile to gather the 3 carfuls of people along with all their paraphernalia as we set out for the 2 hour journey to Rasulabad. There were more questions than answers but we all felt well prepared with much to share and give, and much to learn. The student's chatter despite their sleep deprived night reflected the optimistic enthusiasm.

We arrived at Babaji's temple area and were greeted by the village coordinators. We experienced the village way of people based communication as word spread of our arrival and a crowd started gathering full of understandable curiosity, in the initially empty field. We were dismayed at first to see that the 4 spots we had identified with some distance between them were not level ground. 4 large plastic sheets to seat our 4 groups quickly arrived however as we set up shop close to each other for the next 2 days, flexible to keep moving as the sun changed its position, yet clearly defining the 4 separate groups and interests we were addressing and hopefully not encroaching noise levels on each other.

The children's group was a noisy, excited and very large bunch but beautifully managed by Koel and Kulwant as they improvised all along and on the go, as participant ages, numbers, workshop content, exercises and resources all went topsy turvy!
We had planned for 20 but got 40 plus, and many much younger than we had planned. Our workshop leaders did not want to refuse any child hence the setting, and instead they ran parallel activities after dividing the group into an older and a younger one. 

They started with the ever popular paper plane making which the older children loved of course and then progressed to several paper folding activities making boxes, talking crows, balloons and hats. Parachutes from plastic bags, string and stone was a very popular activity. The younger ones did a lot of drawing and coloring, first guided and then on their own and also made the crows and parachutes. Storytelling as transition was fun and insightful for us. The children neither wanted to go for lunch nor wanted Koel and Kulwant to have lunch.

The youth group ended up with a good mix of boys and girls though we were initially given to understand it would be mainly girls because many boys are typically forced to leave the village in search of work. Some girls were torn between joining this versus the women's group doing needlework, which was a somewhat more familiar territory for them. However we encouraged their participation here as we wanted to introduce design thinking and concepts to this impressionable group. Shweta did a wonderful job of introducing the notion of art versus design with visual, printed examples, then elicited examples of the same from their context and then asked them to draw these and discuss with each other. One child remarked after understanding design that 'God is then the best designer' that completely floored our student mentors. 

Interestingly, many even started drawing enhanced designs of these objects, like a walking stick with a stabilizer base so as the elderly coughed, the walking stick would not fall. They then attempted drawing visuals to express words like happy, rain etc. after Siddharth gave a bit of orientation and guidance. We discovered that their color preferences and notions are very different from ours. We next moved them into material exploration using wire, paper, straw, matchsticks. etc. Girls mostly made accessories (ear rings here to match Shweta's dress) while boys made artifacts for the home like pen stands. In the afternoon we lost some participants as they left to harvest wheat. 

The women came in large numbers and enthusiastically took the small colored jute pieces as they worked in cross stitch to make a chessboard pattern. We saw widely varying skill levels as well as numerical abilities. Counting is a key cross stitch skill and some struggled with it even though their sewing abilities were good.

Sharmila and Mohit worked individually with the women and their skill levels became clear to us through their approach, speed and quality on the chessboard pattern. Here's Mohit's rendition of cross stitch principles on the board. Most wanted to take the pieces home as it is hard for them to stay away from home for long periods. Most women of the 23 odd completed their first piece before the end of day and one mother and daughter team even started on a bigger mat. Few who could not, took them home to complete.

The men's group, much to Amit's concerns on whether they would show up or not given that harvesting is on, surprised us by their participation, engagement, enthusiasm, hands on approach and eagerness. One of our learnings through our preparatory visit was realizing how misinterpreted and misrepresented the word 'jugaad' is, and to change the name of the workshop from 'Multi Jugaad' to 'Creative Thinking and Problem Solving'. 

Our team of Amit, Pulkit and Pankaj introduced them to design and local innovation via images, posters, presentations and talks and by showing printed images of everyday jugaad products, explaining that these were designed by people just like them. This excited them a lot. Sitting in a circle with them, showing printed images of local innovations and us drawing on paper as they spoke were all very effective and got them really excited, especially to realize their own potential and using local resources and their own skills. They came up with very interesting solutions to alternative uses for waste products from daily life (Bottle, razor blade, comb, rag cloth, old rubber slippers, tin cooking oil can, plastic packaging, cycle wheel/rim, bora or jute sac, old cardboard boxes). With plastic bottles for example they came up with slippers as well as handles for a cricket bat and a broom. 

Next we held discussions with them on some of their own local innovations, like Sarkanna (2 person agricultural device for raising soil level for sowing), Rat trap (shown in picture), winnowing fan, solar panel, cow dung on wood as fuel, battery charging etc.. We followed this up with ten objects for which we asked them to suggest alternate uses. We found them really interested and involved but unable to express visually so Pulkit kept drawing as they verbalized, as shown below.

We then walked the team to the nearest hand pump, elicited all the problems of using a hand pump and then asked them to create a device that would enable a single person to use the hand pump more efficiently. There were several interesting ideas, a simple one among them, a funnel and pipe combination!

And as last exercise for the day, we introduced them to the problem of creating an alternative device other than umbrella to protect from the sun while working in fields. 

We gave them thermocole as a possible material which 3 groups used quite effectively while one group worked painstakingly and steadily and produced a wonderful design in bamboo and straw (detailed picts are in the photo diary). We later realized that thermocole was perhaps not a good idea as it limited both the form as well as their imagination and limited them from exploring more local materials. They had a tremendous sense of joy and pride after seeing prototypes they had made themselves. 

Today ended with us feeling exhausted, satisfied and challenged. In particular were our discoveries, of how different planning and reality can be, as well the amount of impromptu curriculum adjustment and extemporized delivery that was needed. We knew we learned as much or perhaps more than we taught.

We left the ground for the school where we were to stay the night looking forward to KFC! 

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30th April 2015