Godrej India Culture Lab fellowship programme
Divya Vaidya
The Godrej India Culture Lab Leadership Programme is a month-long fellowship designed for students from different academic and cultural backgrounds to give you an inside view on the inner workings of the cultural sector in our city. The month not only included us being tutored but also culminate with an event curated by us.
To be a part of the programme we had to answer a question: “What change do you want to see in Mumbai’s culture? How would you create it?” for which the response had no set frameworks. After being shortlisted, I met my fellows- Harsh Vora, Pallavi Khare, Aayush Chaturvedi, Ansh Shah, Harshit Sathija and Rohini Kottu, in a set of meets. I was partially relieved to have one of my seniors at SEA, Harsh Vora, accompanying me. We discussed our responses and folded into one idea to work on over our month at the Lab – Urdu Culture Now.
The Culture Lab team gave us the warmest welcome and we began with our first masterclass with transgender rights activist Zainab Patel. The curriculum was scheduled with four leading minds in activism and culture – Zainab Patel, Nikhil Taneja- a storyteller, Ritesh Uttamchandani- a photographer, Supriya Nair- a cultural journalist to deliver a masterclass in their fields.
Meeting Jai Shah at Mahindra&Mahindra
We also visited a range of cultural spaces. Mortimer Chattrejee from the Chatterjee and Lal art gallery introduced us to the art market and it’s works and gave us a small tour through the galleries in south Bombay for the Art Night Thursday where we conversed with the workings of different art galleries like the Sakshi Art Gallery, Akara Art Gallery, Tarq and the Clark House which is an art residency. I was personally surprised by this one since even after staying in this part of town I did not know much about it which made me question why art and art galleries are limited to a white box and a white box audience? The clark house also made me think of the epicurean theory about living with friends and how collaborative work opens more perspectives than solo works.
We went for an intense tour of alternative Andheri, how these alternative, co-working and collaborative spaces worked with discussions with the drivers of these spaces. Each of these spaces had a different philosophy of working. Sheetal and Anurag from the Overact spoke about spiritual energy, to them pure culture was more grounded in the villages where people lived uncorrupted by the influence of globalisation and technology. However, I believe that culture can be found in the cities too where it’s constantly evolving and amalgamating with each other. Sameera Iyengar and her team from Junoon worked on making the richness of art and culture available to all, especially school going children. Sapan Saran from Tamasha spoke about how they set up from a theatre group to an experimental studio space with artist residencies as their newest project. And right next to it, we met Sheba Alexander from the Harkat Studios, a perfect example of a jugaad business module working as a co-working space over the week and a culture adda over the weekend. Shiv Tandon from the Castiko came from a different entrepreneurial background than the more art embedded others. It was interesting how Castiko as a space rented their web of rooms for cheap rates and formed a hub of artists and performers even without being an active part of curation.
Rashmi Dhanwani, founder of The ArtX Company, asked us, “What is it to be a part of a network?” This question resonates in me yet, trying to find an answer to the changing social-antisocial inside me. Her company operates at the intersection of arts and access and generates value in art by increasing accessibility, researching extensively into culture, and encouraging the development of an audience. Simply in the way she communicated with us made me realise that it, communication, is not a one way street. She frequently posed questions like “what does it take to build a community?” “what does it take to sustain one?” and made us realise that networks are not always built consciously.
Our Lab head Parmesh Shahani too gave us pep talks that I go back to frequently. A man of experience and taste as he truly is, he guided us not only in curating the event but also actively shaping us as individual and as he loves to call us “Cultural leaders of Tomorrow” He really has one of the best art collections I’ve seen.
While being exposed to all of this, we actively applied our learning to our final curatorial event: Urdu Culture Now. Formerly the idea of my culture lab fellow Pallavi Khare, it became a baby for all seven of us. Urdu as a language has a lot of cultural background that is not “muslim” as a layman calls it. This is one of the key points that drove us and not to forget the ruhaniyat (soulfulness) the words have in them. Constantly learning from each other and pulling pranks we got in contact with our desired panelists, performers and artists for the event. We designed a bunch of interesting creatives, GIF’s and memes too.
Discussing ideas at the Harkat studios with Sheba Alexander
A Visit to Godrej archives
Urdu Culture Now was our graduation event. The event had three parts: a panel discussion about the revival of urdu through the internet moderated by Annie Zaidi along with our panelists Zeenat Kulavoor, Hussain Haidry and Mahtab Alam. We had two performances: a Qissebazi (traditional form storytelling) performance by Dainsh Hussain and a contemporary urdu-rock performance by Winit Tikoo. We also had two art exhibits: ‘Bollywood without Urdu’ by Nasheet Shadani that made us realise how extensively we unknowingly use urdu in our daily language, my personal favourite being ‘Mogambo Prasanna hua’ and ‘Don ko pakadna kathin hi nahi’n asambhav hai’. The second exhibit was by artist Zeenat Kulavoor called ‘Khala kehti thi’ where she wrote street smart proverbs like ‘khayali pulav’ and ‘deevaron ke bhi kaan hote hai’ in beautiful composition in Urdu script. All of this was accompanied by a lucknowi inspired snack also cause the lab and we fellows believe that ‘dil ka rasta pet se hokar jata hai’ I am kidding.
They call it the India Culture Lab. The word ‘Lab’ truly resonates in their work ethic and being the catalysts to trigger not only a conversation but also simulate change.
Installation ‘Khala kehti thi’ by Zeenat Kulavoor
Progressive Writer’s Movement Meme
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‘Tumhare Paas kya hai’ Meme
Divya Vaidya and Harsh Vora from School of Environment and Architecture were chosen as the Godrej India Culture Lab Summer Fellows for the year 2018.
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