Stay tuned for more workshop updates!
Last week we met up with our artist team to discuss the upcoming workshops we will conduct in Chitpur Road. As usual, we met up in Studio 21 in Gariahat, South Kolkata, and the discussion was a fruitful one. The group of assembled artists included experts in the fields of printmaking, art history, architecture, curation, and performance. Earlier discussions had revolved around social art practices in general, discussions of "community," and thinking about how to conceptualize the process of "community art." Having participants from very different disciplines means that talking about art inevitably brings up many different view points - even conflicting ones. The Hamdasti team has really enjoyed the opportunity to learn from these collaborations and conversations. We are looking forward to facilitate bringing together these different perspectives in a community setting. In this discussion, we attempted to narrow down the areas of focus for the different community workshops to be conducted on Chitpur Road at the end of January. Some of these interests can be seen below, from critical lenses and practices, to signage and names, to documenting history and local narratives, to confronting public and private spaces. Based on the interests of each artist we formed three groups, each of which will develop a site-specific project with students and community members on Chitpur Road. Avijna, Manas and Rajdip will focus on Public Spaces, Joyraj, Sagnik and Ankita on Jatra, and Purnaa, Rajasee and Nilanjan on Printmaking. To kick off the projects we are starting with workshops at the Oriental Seminary School.
Stay tuned for more workshop updates! Over the last month we have started talking to the wonderful officers in the Kolkata Community Policing Department about a new project with them. We joined them at their Annual Sports Day at the Body Guard Lines Police Compound, where participants in Community Policing Initiatives from across Kolkata were present. We met some of the other officers involved in Community Policing and were able to understand the demographic of their target population. As we continue to develop our proposal the key questions that interest us are how we can create a better understanding about the role of the police and the rights of the citizens, and how we can include both the police and citizens in a conversation around these issues.
We are very happy to present The Chitpur Archive, a collection of images, textures, stories, references and text fragments that document the many facets Chitpur Road. This archive is being collectively created by the members of the Chitpur Heritage Action Group, as they explore the history of the locality and the lives of community today. The archive is a space of exploration and not necessarily of objective, expert generated information. It functions as a space for inspiration, a collection of fragments that loosely connect to each other as we try to create a coherent narrative. It is created in the hope that these connections help us to think of Chitpur Road in new ways as we begin to develop our projects.
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HamdastiWe are a Kolkata based non-profit dedicated to promoting civic engagement through participatory art projects. Archives
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