The 3rd edition of the Urban Typhoon workshop is about to begin in Khirkee, New Delhi. This workshop follows the Urban Typhoon Shimokitazawa, Tokyo in 2006 and the Urban Typhoon Kholiwada-Dharavi, Mumbai in 2008. This is a good time to reflect on its purpose and methodology. These notes are aimed at all the participants of the Urban Typhoon Khirkee as well as anyone interested in the practice of participatory planning, community art and urban action-research initiatives in any part of the world.

1. The Urban Typhoon workshop was born in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo in 2006 through discussions with activists and academics who were looking for new forms of advocacy and participation based on local knowledge and cultural practices. The neighbourhood of Shimokitazawa was, and still is, threatened by the construction of a large speedway cutting across its dense urban fabric. Shimokitazawa, Koliwada-Dharavi and Khirkee are what we would refer to as 1) user-generated neighbourhoods, and 2) neighbourhoods in formation.

2. User-generated neighbourhoods are places where participatory development is already alive, even if un-self-consciously. The users are the residents, the shopkeepers, artisans, manufacturers and even visitors and other travelers. They all shape the neighbourhood in small ways, through their “practices of everyday life” and collectively make it alive. User-generated neighbourhoods are not a collection of architectural objects. Over time they develop their own character (or “spirit”) and respond to users in particular ways. They are often complex, contested, and threatened. Their users are typically deeply attached to them for personal reasons and accused of being dysfunctional and backward. We see user-generated neighbourhoods as ancient and futuristic at the same time. They ring a special cord with net-generation architectivists, urbanologists and other hackers and artists who see them as learning grounds for new social practices.

3. Neighbourhoods in formation are neighbourhoods that are being constantly developed and improved by their users. So-called “slums” and “informal settlements” often fall in this category. They stand in sharp contrast with master planned and mass developed settlements which have to be centrally managed and maintained and leave little scope for user’s intervention, outside of formal structures and bureaucratic processes. Neighbourhoods in formation derive their value through the way they are being used, not by the speculative market. Neighbourhoods in formation usually improve over time. When left to develop in their own terms, they often become popular destinations for cultural tourists and youth hunting for “authenticity” or a space outside the grid. Neighbourhoods in formation are typically portrayed as messy and dysfunctional by developers and the planning authorities, who see them as raw material for construction projects.

4. Participation can happen anywhere, when people feel the need to get involved with their social and physical environment. It is never as high as when all residents are simultaneously affected by a disaster that they must address collectively. More often than not, these disasters are man-made. Khirkee seems to be in permanent crisis, with roads being systematically flooded or destroyed and sewage spilling along the streets. Many initiatives have been taken by the residents and local organizations such as KHOJ. Many have failed, few have succeeded. Rather than proposing new participatory methods or “solutions”, we must understand what systems of participation already exist in Khirkee and how they can be used in the most effective ways.

5. Urban Typhoon workshops make sense only when they can be organized in partnership with a local group. In this case, KHOJ, which has been present and active in Khirkee for 12 years invited URBZ to organize a workshop. URBZ and KHOJ have been working together to prepare the workshop. KHOJ is bringing its experience of the neighbourhood, its local network and opens the possibility of continuing some of the projects that will be started during the workshop afterward. URBZ is bringing its experience in organizing participatory workshops, its global network and the enthusiasm of its team.

6. Participants come from Khirkee, other parts of Delhi, other cities and other countries. It is more difficult to get participants from Khirkee than from abroad. Locally, people are typically disillusioned, skeptical or busy. Registered participants on the other hand are often extremely motivated and full of goodwill. One of the main challenge for participants coming from other places will be to find respectful and constructive ways to engage with people in Khirkee. The workshop doesn’t offer a formula for participation. The equation with “the community” has to be invented by all participants individually and collectively. This is where creativity is most needed.

7. The “community” may not exist before we create it in some way and it is often invoked most concretely only in a collective process. Khirkee has many traditional communities, which may themselves be internally divided. The attempt of the  workshop is to bring together people from different parts of the neighbourhood and beyond to help the emergence of a new network of people through the process of working and brainstorming together. Such an event has to be understood as a creative one, which helps transform perspectives and brings shifts in perception and action. Community arts initiatives have often been trivialised by both, activists and artists. We feel that its is only through a process that evokes and works with the idea of the creative and the collective that major strides can be taken in both realms. The first as well as the final challenge is often simply about discovering a shared sense of purpose.

November 9-16, 2010

In partnership with Khoj. With the support of Ford Foundation and the Norwegian Embassy. ‘KHOJ International Artists’ Association’ is an artist led alternative space for experimentation and international exchange based in India. Part of the global Triangle Arts Trust, KHOJ sees its role as an incubator for art and ideas, artistic exchange and dialogue in the visual arts.

The Urban Typhoon workshop invites artists, architects, activists and academics from all over the world to ideate with residents, grassroots groups and other users of Khirkee Village, New Delhi. The event aims at reclaiming the locality by collectively generating multiple ideas, visions and plans for its future.

During the week-long workshops all kinds of interventions and interactions will take place, stimulating debate, exchange and awareness. The workshop draws its energy and creativity from the involvement of local users, including business owners, housewives, children, teenagers, loiterers and other hoodies. It focuses on local participation and global engagement.

The workshop is documented throughout the week. The participants also produce all kinds of material, which is then uploaded on a user-generated Website. In addition, the output is translated into various installations, exhibitions, essays, festivals, architectural designs, urban plans and site-specific action, during and after the workshop. Its ultimate aim is to inform decision-makers on the aspirations and potential of Khirkee Village.

URBZ, has been conducting similar workshops in various places around the world including Shimokitazawa (Tokyo), Dharavi (Mumbai) and Galata (Istanbul).

The Urban Typhoon Khirkee (New Delhi) workshop is being organized in partnership with Khoj, a globally renowned artists collective based in that very neighbourhood. Khirkee is an ‘urban village’ in a city in fast forward mode, which may need to creatively reinvent itself if it is to preserve its identity in an increasingly alienating global context.

Khoj has operated from there for more than a decade and has initiated several projects, where artists have become urban practitioners projecting visions and revealing choices that formal actors may have overlooked.  In this partnership between Khoj and URBZ, we hope to organize an event that has a special significance to the world of urban engagement in which artists have a special role to play.

Participant Requirements:

The Urban Typhoon workshop is multicultural, multidisciplinary and a multimedia event. Students, urban planners, architects, designers, artists, sociologists, media artists, political activists, and anyone with a high motivation to work in urban spaces and willing to engage local communities for the week long duration of the workshop is welcome to join.

The objective is to produce creative alternatives for the future of a neighborhood threatened by limited official choices and imagination.

Please fill up the registration form, including a 100-word bio-note of yourself and a face-picture.

We will be in regular touch through e-mail after that.

Travel and boarding expenses are to be borne by the participants (so,don’t wait to make travel bookings! We will also make reservations at reasonable rates in local lodges and hotels to facilitate the process).

On the 6^th and 7^th of this month we organised a 48 hour workshop with and for the residents of New Transit Camp in Dharavi. We have spent now nearly 3 months working with the children at the Dharavi Shelter, creating a new platform for art and expression, learning about the residents’ lives and thoughts and sharing this space for learning and growing.

We have been engaged in activities ranging from drawing and painting, animation screening, dance, visits to the city, as well as improving the current space we inhabit. What has been very special from the start of this small initiative, is that we have closely worked with the residents of the community, always seeking elders advice and understanding the communities´ aspirations and hopes for the shelter, and we have been working hard to try and achieve them.

The 48 hour event we organised in Dharavi had two main aims, one was to gain some more funds for our dreams for the site to include a space for a library and a computer room, as well funds for more activities, and the other was to raise more awareness and get more people involved in the shelter and its activities.

The event was incredible, not because we raised a lot of money (because we honestly didn’t!) but because together with the effort of so many volunteers and the community we engaged in two days of sharing, learning and lots of fun with so many new creative activities with the children.

The first 24 hours

So the first day, after setting up the artwork for sale and organising the hall, we began our daytime activities. The children engaged in a drawing competition facilitated by Common Room artists Khushnam and Anitra. This was followed by a clay workshop by a group of youth from neighbouring ‘Khumbarwada’ (a part of Dharavi where Gujarati potters live and work) who made little toys and objects out of clay. In the afternoon, a painting workshop was conducted by American artist Alison Reeves and in addition to this, Sejal and Snowy, also conducted a mural painting workshop with a group of children inside the Shelter. They painted the walls with blackboard paint to enable the space to be used for learning in the future.

In addition to all the art activities, Sudharak Olwe, from the Times of India Group, and his team of photographers also exhibited the photographic work they have been doing in Dharavi and made a presentation about their future work. Now their team is interested in commencing a photography workshop with the children so that the children document their environment and neighbourhood streets.

In this space, we also displayed an Austrian exhibition which documented ´cultures of living´ through images of homes and people which were photographed and then exchanged to later emerge as a book.

At the event, Italian and German and students from Liebniz University that had been working in Dharavi for a week learning about the history of the houses, presented back to the community what they had learnt and what they wished to work on in the future. The work was exhibited in the main hall enabling community residents to discuss and critique what they saw. It was an extremely valuable opportunity for sharing and learning as well as generating discussions about people’s stories, their creative efforts and their aspirations.

Lastly, the evening ended with a beautiful musical performance by sitar player Madhusudhan Kumar who was accompanied by his tabla player. The musicians called on the participation of the children and beckoned them onto stage to give them an introduction to classical Indian rhythms. The children sang and screamed to their hearts content!

The last 24 hours

The second day began with new energy and new volunteers. Roy, Avani, Parul and Steve, brought with themselves lots of paper plates, feathers, glitter and paints and conducted an extremely enjoyable mask making activity with the children. In addition to this an Italian photographer, that has travelled around India for quite many months, dropped by to show his work to the children and learn about their opinions and thoughts about what they saw. The Khumbars, dropped by again as well, this time to demonstrate to the audience, their pot making skills on the spinning wheel. In addition Yashmi and Namta did an incredible mural painting workshop with the children in the entrance wall of the shelter, where they joined in a collaborative effort to paint a tree with many branches and gathered the children to write their names all around it.

In the early evening, we were joined by the Capoeria group in Mumbai, who came to conduct a small class and perform their beautiful art at the event. Rezah Massah, the professor of the team, imbibed the audience with uplifting energy and gathered the children to do some capoeira exercises. This was then followed by a brilliant performance from the team.

Koli (the fishermen folk and original residents of Dharavi and the city) set up a stall and sold delicious fish treats for the hungry bellies throughout the evening. People mingled, gathered, shared, learnt, danced, smiled, participated and most importantly enjoyed themselves!

The final activity for the event was the much waited dance competition the children had been practicing for weeks. Paul’s wife (who owns the shelter and has encouraged us to work there) took over the stage and presented the dancers show. This was followed by a prize distribution and lots of music, dancing and fun!

The event was a great opportunity for us to reach out to more people that came to learn about the Shelter, but most importantly for the children and  residents to engage in a 2 day art event that brought people from outside to step into Dharavi for the first time and learn what this place is really about; a place where ambitions are strong, and aspirations are high, where children have an incredible energy and a capacity to learn and swallow the world if given the opportunity, where the worlds future artists and creative minds exist, where people have the will, the strength and heart to make things change for the better by themselves. A place that needs to be legitimized so that people can synergize all their positive energy into working towards their future rather than battling against a system by which they are deemed illegal, by a system that doesn’t collaborate with the residents to understand who they really are, by a system that wants to use a ‘tabula rasa’ approach and force them all to start from zero all over again.

On the 6^th and 7^th of this month we organised a 48 hour workshop with and for the residents of New Transit Camp in Dharavi. We have spent now nearly 3 months working with the children at the Dharavi Shelter, creating a new platform for art and expression, learning about the residents’ lives and thoughts and sharing this space for learning and growing.

We have been engaged in activities ranging from drawing and painting, animation screening, dance, visits to the city, as well as improving the current space we inhabit. What has been very special from the start of this small initiative, is that we have closely worked with the residents of the community, always seeking elders advice and understanding the communities´ aspirations and hopes for the shelter, and we have been working hard to try and achieve them.

The 48 hour event we organised in Dharavi had two main aims, one was to gain some more funds for our dreams for the site to include a space for a library and a computer room, as well funds for more activities, and the other was to raise more awareness and get more people involved in the shelter and its activities.

The event was incredible, not because we raised a lot of money (because we honestly didn’t!) but because together with the effort of so many volunteers and the community we engaged in two days of sharing, learning and lots of fun with so many new creative activities with the children.

The first 24 hours

So the first day, after setting up the artwork for sale and organising the hall, we began our daytime activities. The children engaged in a drawing competition facilitated by Common Room artists Khushnam and Anitra. This was followed by a clay workshop by a group of youth from neighbouring ‘Khumbarwada’ (a part of Dharavi where Gujarati potters live and work) who made little toys and objects out of clay. In the afternoon, a painting workshop was conducted by American artist Alison Reeves and in addition to this, Sejal and Snowy, also conducted a mural painting workshop with a group of children inside the Shelter. They painted the walls with blackboard paint to enable the space to be used for learning in the future.

In addition to all the art activities, Sudharak Olwe, from the Times of India Group, and his team of photographers also exhibited the photographic work they have been doing in Dharavi and made a presentation about their future work. Now their team is interested in commencing a photography workshop with the children so that the children document their environment and neighbourhood streets.

In this space, we also displayed an Austrian exhibition which documented ´cultures of living´ through images of homes and people which were photographed and then exchanged to later emerge as a book.

At the event, Italian and German and students from Liebniz University that had been working in Dharavi for a week learning about the history of the houses, presented back to the community what they had learnt and what they wished to work on in the future. The work was exhibited in the main hall enabling community residents to discuss and critique what they saw. It was an extremely valuable opportunity for sharing and learning as well as generating discussions about people’s stories, their creative efforts and their aspirations.

Lastly, the evening ended with a beautiful musical performance by sitar player Madhusudhan Kumar who was accompanied by his tabla player. The musicians called on the participation of the children and beckoned them onto stage to give them an introduction to classical Indian rhythms. The children sang and screamed to their hearts content!

The last 24 hours

The second day began with new energy and new volunteers. Roy, Avani, Parul and Steve, brought with themselves lots of paper plates, feathers, glitter and paints and conducted an extremely enjoyable mask making activity with the children. In addition to this an Italian photographer, that has travelled around India for quite many months, dropped by to show his work to the children and learn about their opinions and thoughts about what they saw. The Khumbars, dropped by again as well, this time to demonstrate to the audience, their pot making skills on the spinning wheel. In addition Khushnam and her friend did an incredible mural painting workshop with the children in the entrance wall of the shelter, where they joined in a collaborative effort to paint a tree with many branches and gathered the children to write their names all around it.

In the early evening, we were joined by the Capoeria group in Mumbai, who came to conduct a small class and perform their beautiful art at the event. Rezah Massah, the professor of the team, imbibed the audience with uplifting energy and gathered the children to do some capoeira exercises. This was then followed by a brilliant performance from the team.

Koli (the fishermen folk and original residents of Dharavi and the city) set up a stall and sold delicious fish treats for the hungry bellies throughout the evening. People mingled, gathered, shared, learnt, danced, smiled, participated and most importantly enjoyed themselves!

The final activity for the event was the much waited dance competition the children had been practicing for weeks. Paul’s wife (who owns the shelter and has encouraged us to work there) took over the stage and presented the dancers show. This was followed by a prize distribution and lots of music, dancing and fun!

The event was a great opportunity for us to reach out to more people that came to learn about the Shelter, but most importantly for the children and  residents to engage in a 2 day art event that brought people from outside to step into Dharavi for the first time and learn what this place is really about; a place where ambitions are strong, and aspirations are high, where children have an incredible energy and a capacity to learn and swallow the world if given the opportunity, where the worlds future artists and creative minds exist, where people have the will, the strength and heart to make things change for the better by themselves. A place that needs to be legitimized so that people can synergize all their positive energy into working towards their future rather than battling against a system by which they are deemed illegal, by a system that doesn’t collaborate with the residents to understand who they really are, by a system that wants to use a ‘tabula rasa’ approach and force them all to start from zero all over again.

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!