Participants at Work

Art has been a favoured tool in the hands of sensitive pedagogues. Our small initiative in Dharavi takes art seriously – for its own sake. We are sure that our little moves will ferret out tremendous talent from the rich locality in which it is situated. Many children coming to the Shelter also go to regular schools but love its special focus – which allows them to channelize the rich experience of living life in the city into new creative expressions. We want all kinds of artists to walk this street, visit the Shelter and inspire them to relate to artistic practices in passionate ways.

At the same time one part of us wants to extend this space into other terrains as well. After all, there are those who also value the learning dimension inbuilt into artistic expression. We have special sessions where the acts of drawing and expression specifically help reflect on the streets, homes, lives and communities of all those who belong there, by using creative landmarks and creating new uses of space. We would like to blur the boundaries between art and craft, science and maths and let the imagination translate into learning new skills – whether it be plumbing, water management, construction and roofing. Skills that are best learned in this special part of the city, which can sprout a building with so little resources within a week. We would like to take the Shelter into a space where elders and children converse across community, class, gender and ethnic divides and learn about the intricacies that made the locality of Dharavi so rich, so that the aspirations of the newer generation get energized in fresher ways.

We would love more visitors – from around the world – to come and interact and learn and inspire. We are pretty sure that much learning will take place in the Shelter, a learning that combines expression, knowledge, creativity and science about living in cities.

Pay us a visit soon!

The Shelter at Dharavi is gaining greater momentum with its various creative activities and more and more new children flocking into the shelter to see what is going on and requesting drawing classes. The energy and enthusiasm is incredible making our work seem even more worthwhile and significant.

We have now already painted the new entrance to the shelter, which was a creative and collaborative mural painting produced by many of the children of Dharavi.

Now in the weeks to come we are hoping to keep on developing and improving the entire site so that the shelter grows and becomes a dynamic and multi-use space that is used by not only the children, but also the elders, youth and women. We want to see the space grow in a participatory manner, with people contributing by painting its walls, planting flowers and shrubs, building a fun play area with re-used materials and thus making the space entirely their own. Already we have seen how the children have self-organised themselves, taking charge of clearing out the space, organising the room, taking a register of all new children coming in and ensuring the doors are all locked when they leave.

Our dreams for the site now include building on what already exists and creating a vibrant space for creative social exchange, learning and interaction. We would like to have a library, a café, a play area for children and a garden and as Paul’s motivation of creating this space is a testimony to the willingness of Dharavi residents to improve their living standards, we would like this place to become a symbol of this in the way that it is created too. Using materials from Dharavi itself and using the skills and ideas from its residents we would like to assist by building a play area from disused car tyres, making a wall from glass bottles from Dharavi’s compound 13 recycling area, decorating the patio with pots made in neighbouring Khumbarwada and planting mangrove saplings in the garden as a symbol of the land where Dharavi originated.

Please take a look at our poster (below) with some of the ideas of the activities we would like to carry out at the Shelter and the costs for each activity. Your donations can make these dreams come true?

Click here to enlarge the flyer

[Version française]

The Dharavi Shelter is a space dedicated to children and elderly residents living in New Transit Camp Nagar in Dharavi, Mumbai, India.

Drawing workshop at the Dharavi Shelter. Click here for more photos.

Dharavi’s New Transit Camp is a lively neighbourhood with a diverse population. See more photos.

URBZ Office in Dharavi NewTransit Camp.

URBZ members Dipti (architect) and Himanshu S (artist) with Paul Raphael in the back of the Dharavi Shelter, taking about future plans for a bookstore/library with a tea room on top.

Plan for a simple brick structure next to the Shelter which could host a library/bookstore and a small team room on top.

We are giving art classes to about 50 children every Sunday and would like to expand our activities. In addition to the drawing workshops, we want to screen movies and offer lunch to the children attending the shelter. Subsequently, we would like to offer photography and computer classes. We are looking for support to purchase art material, buy chairs, tables and shelves, offer lunch to 50 to 60 street children every day, hire a part-time animator and build a bookstore/library and a tearoom for all the residents. Even very small amounts can help the shelter a lot. For instance for $2 we can buy a nice crayon box, for $20 we can offer a simple lunch for 60 kids, with $200 we can purchase plastic tables and chairs for the shelter and with $2,000 we can build a new brick structure to host the library!

The context:

Dharavi is one of Mumbai’s most celebrated and misunderstood neighbourhoods. The media often wrongly describes it as the largest slum in Asia. Recently, the award winning movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ bestowed lots of global attention on it since several of its defining moments were shot in Dharavi’s dense and labyrinthine streets. Hundreds of thousands of migrants came to Dharavi over four generations ago with little else but a fierce desire to survive and live a life of dignity. Through their enterprise they transformed a piece of marshy land into a highly productive neighbourhood – an economic powerhouse, by all accounts but also a place of cultural hybridization, social emancipation and urbanistic innovation. Unfortunately, the city of Mumbai did not always empathize with Dharavi’s potential. Dharavi still suffers from lack of infra-structural support, continued social prejudices and the exigencies of electoral politics.

URBZ members have been working in Dharavi for a few years, notably organizing participatory workshops and urban design studios, researching and writing about its organic development and its architectural organization, and advocating against the Dharavi Redevelopment Project initiated by the Government of Maharashtra. In February 2008, we launched www.dharavi.org which soon became the most comprehensive source of information on Dharavi and an active social network used by many in Dharavi and from the rest of the world. It was visited 200,000 times since its launch.

In September 2009, we opened an office in New Transit Camp, which is a very dynamic and crowded neighourhood in Dharavi. The population of New Transit Camp is extremely mixed with Christians, Muslims and Hindus, many of whom originally came from the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra and live side by side. Our landlord, Paul Raphael is an active member of the Communal Harmony movement which started after the 1992-1993 Bombay riots. He is deeply involved in the social life of the neighbourhood. Just as we moved into our new office, Paul inherited a 200 m2 plot of land a few meters down the street. He asked us to help create a social club which would host activities for children and the elderly.

We would like to share this project with more people who could help us realize it. Our dream is to see this little patch evolve into a dynamic and animated space in which children, the elderly and all those concerned, use it create a public sphere within Dharavi which demonstrates the special spirit of this unique part of Mumbai’s history. We would also like this space to become a bridge between residents of Dharavi and visitors from outside. Once the basic needs are covered (material for the classes, lunch for the kids and a salary for an animator), we would like to open a team room open to all elderly, youth, locals and outsiders. It goes without saying that all the contributors to the Shelter’s project will be more than welcome to visit us in Dharavi, when they travel to India!

Paul’s motivation of creating this space is a testimony to the willingness of Dharavi residents to improve their living standards. It is very special to see how children respond with so much electric enthusiasm to the tiniest gestures we can make. It will be as special to actually start documenting the experiences of the several elderly residents who have lived in Dharavi all their lives, once the space starts getting used by them as well.

Do help us in any which way you can and come and see this little space grow through your support. Donations can be made by credit card, via our Paypal account (just click on the link below), by check  or by wire transfer via partner organizations in the US and Japan (see instructions).

Checks can be written to American India Foundation  which has US tax deductable status (501-C3).  On the left it should say that they are for Asia Initiatives URBZ project. A message should be sent to URBZ giving the amount and date the check sent. The address is given below:

Mr. Venkatesh Raghavendra

CFO, American India Foundation

216, E. 45th Street, 7th Floor,

New York, NY 10017

Alternatively, bank transfers can be made in Japan to Asia Initiatives.  A message should be sent to URBZ giving the amount and date the check sent. The bank transfer information is given below:

Bank Name:  Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation

(ミツイスミトモギンコウ)

Branch:  Roppongi Branch #619

(ロッポンギ　シテン)

Account:  Saving

(フツウ)

Account #:  7399351

Account Name:  Tokutei_hieirikatsudo_hojin Asia Initiatives

(トクテイヒエイリカツドウホウジン　アジア　イニシアティブズ)

THANK YOU!

Toy Bazaar: Toys in exchange of memories in the old bazaar style

Team: Himanshu S, Monica Nanjunga,  Guru S., Varsha Deshikar, Yashmi  Kantak  and  Namita  Thakur.

Sites: JJ School of Art and Architecture, Wilson College Neighbourhood, Chowpatty, Khotachiwadi, Crawford Market.

The MASHUP is an opportunity to visualize Mumbai’s oldest neighbourhoods afresh. This is important not only because these constantly evolving spaces are changing at a fast pace, but also because a little bit of imagination can help them do so without disrupting their spirit and the lives of their old and new residents. Your photograph, photo-shopped image, graphic, painting, poem, rendering, essay or anything else that you choose to express yourself with, will go a long way in giving direction to the ongoing make over of this part of the city. The MASHUP will work with Mumbai’s student and resident population together with international participants. We will explore these neighbourhoods, archive ongoing transformations, introduce thoughts, ideas and images from elsewhere and help visualize the future in a manner that does justice to both, the history and aspirations of these spaces.

Why leave this important task to politicians and the development lobby? Come – join the fun and take charge!

The MASHUP activities cover the oldest neighbourhoods of the city. Girgaum, where Khotachiwadi  – the much threatened and celebrated trophy heritage habitat exists, just a stone’s throw away from Chowpatty beach, another historic space for demonstrating free expression. A fifteen minute walk takes you to Crawford Market – Mumbai’s oldest and favourite shopping destination, facing its own challenges. In between lies a maze of dense streets and bazaars that testify the ability of the city’s numerous communities to make the city what it is, a city of shops, markets, factories, docks, artisanship, dreams and collective aspirations.

In this maze lie opportunities that provide newer definitions of what it means to be a Mumbaikar, through the many languages the city speaks in, the many cultural practices it invents, its changing and evolving built forms, its bazaars and markets that are as vital and dense as the air Mumbai breathes – making the question of its identity richer than anything the city officially celebrates. Way richer than the imagination of its political leaders and deeper than the possibilities framed by its most conscientious citizens.

Register now!!!