It started with a easy assertion: “My identity is my right.” It was February 2021, proper after the lockdown had lifted. The youth of Natwar Parekh Compound, a slum relocation and rehabilitation colony in Mumbai’s Govandi neighbourhood, had convened on the neighborhood library for a workshop about reclaiming public area.
One of essentially the most uncared for suburbs of Mumbai, Govandi is residence to quite a few poorly-planned colonies, flanked by factories, a thermal energy plant, and a big open landfill. It isn’t part of the town most individuals would have trigger to go to, however it’s residence to a big share of the town’s blue collar workforce.
Govandi Arts Festival has come from an extended engagement between Community Design Agency and the residents of Natwar Parekh Colony
| Photo Credit:
Community Design Agency
Since 2016, Community Design Agency (CDA) has been working intently with the colony’s residents to enhance their constructed surroundings. One such enchancment was Kitaab Mahal, the neighborhood library, constructed out of the bones of an outdated condominium. Another was a street-redesigning mission that the youth of Govandi designed and applied, however which petered out throughout the lockdown. Workshops that solicited the neighborhood’s suggestions had been integral to CDA’s course of. At one such workshop, a dialog about id culminated in an particularly hanging sentiment: the youth, uninterested in the stigma they confronted for the place they hail from, had been able to stake their declare on their neighbourhood. “My identity is my right,” they mentioned, and the echoes carried far past that closed group.
The tempo had already been set by Moin Khan, a Govandi-based filmmaker and rapper whose video ‘Haq se Govandi’ (Govandi, my satisfaction) has almost 80,000 views on YouTube on the time of writing. Since then, the sentiment has impressed an eponymous mural in Natwar Parekh Compound, and now, a community-driven artwork revolution.
Photography mentees with mockups of their works
| Photo Credit:
Community Design Agency
Art is protest
The Govandi Arts Festival — a youth-centric initiative that can be up within the streets of Natwar Parekh Compound between February 15 and 19 — is concurrently a celebration of the neighbourhood’s spirit and a type of light protest. “A public art festival [both performative and visual arts] felt like a very natural route to working with the youth and giving them the freedom of expression that they were yearning for,” says competition co-curator Natasha Sharma.
One of the numerous workshops for Govandi Arts Festival
| Photo Credit:
Community Design Agency
She recollects how, on the very first festival-focused workshop, when the youngsters had been requested to think about what artwork means to them, they replied, “Art is a form of creative resistance.” Sharma says: “These were some of the thoughts they shared candidly during our first discussion,” she provides, “Imagine what they could do with different tools, like theatre, or rap.”
Since final July, professionals from fields resembling theatre, movie, pictures, and music — assume filmmaker Pankaj Rishi Kumar, photographer Tejinder Singh, beatboxers Danish and Tash — have been mentoring 45 kids. Storyteller and visible communicator Jerry Antony, as an example, is working with members on an animated movie that may ultimately be projected onto the facade of the Natwar Parekh Compound buildings.
Jerry Antony conducting a cease movement animation workshop at Govandi
| Photo Credit:
Community Design Agency
“People look at children from the slum, and assume we don’t know anything, we don’t have any skills, and so we don’t deserve opportunities,” says Sana, a 19-year-old Govandi resident and filmmaking mentee. “But if you see the quality of the work we are producing, you’ll see we can be better than some top-class people!” Affan, an 18-year-old, provides, “We don’t always get the right kind of support, but this festival has shown me there is a lot of talent in Govandi.”
The ultimate animation projected on the neighbourhood buildings
| Photo Credit:
Community Design Agency
An equal area
CDA is organising the competition in collaboration with UK-based organisations The Lamplighters (who’s working with kids to create a lantern parade) and Streets Reimagined (who’s advising them on parade planning and digital initiatives), as a part of the continued initiative, ‘India/UK Together, a Season of Culture’.
“For five days, we want to create a safe space, an equal space, where the rest of the city and the residents of Govandi can come together in the spirit of art,” says co-curator Bhawna Jaimini. “We don’t want to pander to the outside gaze that might look down on working-class communities, but the hope is to create a space where all our socio-economic identities can dissipate as we share our experiences through art.” Eventually, CDA hopes to make the competition a bi-annual occasion, in addition to be an inspiration to different communities who would possibly need to undertake the format in their very own neighbourhoods.
The freelance author and playwright relies in Mumbai.
Source: www.thehindu.com
