On the 22nd and 23rd of May, 2010, The Shelter at Dharavi is hosting a two-day participatory workshop open to everyone who is interested in the creative arts. The event, which is entitled Art in Bombay’s Capital: Dharavi (ABC:D), is a chance for people to actively participate with local children and learn about the activities that are currently available at the Shelter. The event will be open from 12:00 noon onwards on both the 22nd and 23rd.

The workshop will consist of a series of projects in photography, performance, drawing and painting, capoeira, and will be followed by film screenings. The outputs of the event will contribute to a mobile exhibition, which will showcase a larger collection of work from local children and several Mumbai artists.

The entry fee for participants is Rs. 300, 100% of which will go towards sustaining and improving the current activities at the shelter. Please visit the Shelter at Dharavi Facebook page for all of the latest Shelter information!

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.

A few weeks ago, our Sunday was spent painting clay pots that we purchased from the nearby Dharavi neighbourhood of Khumbarwada, which is only a five minute walk from the Dharavi Shelter and the Transit Camp.

From some of our small donations that we have received up to this date, we managed to buy some pots, paints, brushes and wire. The children from the Shelter organised themselves into groups and painted the clay pots producing some incredible patterns and designs. A local resident then came in to help us hang the pots in the entrance patio of our Shelter and at the same time we began painting the bricks on the entrance wall in the patio.

This activity was one of a series of activities we are want to carry out to transform the Shelter and develop it into an incredible and beautiful space for art, creativity, exchange and learning.

The following images have some more of our plans to convert the remaining space we have surrounding the existing structure. We have included approximate costs for each of these activities.

Your contributions are most welcome!

Samuha is a collective of artists based in Bangalore (Bengaluru). URBZ is helping them design a temporary workshop/exhibition and party space in the neighborhood of Richmond Town. [gmap] This design is a participatory work in process:

The main idea was to provide large spaces where different functions would not be segregated from one another, so that more fluid forms of multi-media, 2D, 3D and perfomance art could take place: the stage can be viewed from two different places, 2D artwork can be displayed in the lecture hall, on the stage area, in the café-bar area, as well as in the atrium and stairs. Art pieces, 2D or sculpture can essentially hang anywhere in the building (walls and even ceiling).

There are huge empty walls, and since the entire structure is made of scaffolding, there nothing easier than to attach panels, banners, picture, objects, a projector or even to hang large objects from the ceiling structure or on the facade. There is a total floor area of 4800 sqft.: 2800 sqft on the ground floor. 2000 sqft on the first floor. The building footprint is 3000 sqft (66′ x 59′). -LECTURE HALL: 1500 sqft, with a stage area of 500 sqft. 150 people can sit.

EXHIBITION SPACE: 2000 sqft, without counting the Atrium, Stairs to first floor and other potential spaces that can be used to exhibit work.

ATRIUM-GARDEN-HANG OUT SPACE: 800 sqft

CAFE-BAR: located within the exhibition space, sitting space could be anywhere in the Garden /Hang out space.

WORKING STUDIOS, 2000 sqft., organized in two parts:

OPEN TABLES AREA:  65′ length of table which could accomodate 50 ppl working -semi-closed working spaces: 29 semi-closed studio spaces with table and chairs.

Organized in small clusters with small open chill-out area / garden space in between 25 x small_25sqft. the unit can accommodate 2 pple, a total of 50 ppl 3 x medium_50 sqft. the unit can accommodate 8 pple, a total of 24 ppl 1 x large_100 sqft_the unit can accommodate 15 pple, a total of 15 ppl -A total 140 ppl approx can work on the first floor and more ppl can work on the ground floor, in the Atrium, lobby or sitting around the garden to use the wireless.

Two small BATHROOMS 25 sqft approx.

The Structure:

We have been working on many different options before choosing to go with scaffolding to provide structure and a basic skeleton. We went through pallet racks wood rods and bamboo, but it seemed  that scaffolding offered the most possibilities. The main constraints on the structure are a load of 100-300 people and building a floor or two that can bear the same amount of load. Also, the floor and ceiling heights are flexible.

We designed the whole structure as ’space-frames’, meaning that the building is made as a large box with thick hollow walls. It will give a huge atrium and great light. The space frame could be covered with fabric and custom-made plastic sheets for waterproofing. The material should be pretty cheap, and we could even work directly with some recycler in neighboring slum settlements and local workshops for the sewing.

The whole building will look like a box from the outside with few windows and doors punctuating the volume, and at night, the building would look like a light box.

We already mentioned it above, but this building made of scaffolding would allow one to curate art works in infinite ways. It would even be easy to display huge banners on the outside walls of the building. All of the electrical equipment could run through the space-frame walls to provide outlets in any place within the building. Lamps and projectors could be attached to any parts of the ceiling with a simple clipping system.

Some facts about scaffolding:  Easily available in India and to be rented, therefore a cheap solution, easy and quick mounting, easy to dismount and remount -lightweight but extremely resistant -comes as a kit of parts, all the joints are available, and it provides limitless possibilities.

Construction and moving from city A to B: The whole building should be easy to put together. The structure should be put together by a skilled worker, but there are plenty of other things to build that would allow anyone to come and participate. We are sure that we could get a whole workshop of architecture students to come and help as well.

Shimokitazawa, is the first among the sites that opened itself up to our involvements through the Urban Typhoon workshop 2006.

Well-known for being a vibrant area, home to many bars, restaurants, and speciality stores, just minutes away from major hubs such as Shibuya and Shinjuku, it is threatened by government plans for a large road right through the neighborhood. The new plan would result in transforming a low-rise, local scale, community orientated neighborhood into a commercial center similar to so many others in Tokyo.

The workshop aimed at creating a testimony to the unique urban and cultural value of Shimokitazawa, with its narrow streets, dense pedestrian traffic, and dynamic cultural activity. The workshop was an experiment in global participatory planning, which produced alternative urban plans for Shimokitazawa. More than 130 Japanese and international urbanists, architects, artists, photographers, and local residents worked together for a week and produced a multicultural, multidisciplinary and multimedia portrait of Shimokitazawa and visions for its future.

See the Website of the Urban Typhoon Workshop Tokyo

Download the PDF report (18.8 MB)