Towards a Responsible Future Generation

Posted by Robin Goel

at September 25, 2009

(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)

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Navtej Johar is a man on a mission.

Returning to India in 1992 after nine years, he was dismayed to observe that Indian cities were chaotic and haphazard, unlike his childhood memories of a spacious, safe, well articulated and easy on eye city of Chandigarh. This feeling was aggravated with the realization that a whole new generation that have grown up in that span of time, with the same attitude, insensitive and inured, and with no change in sense of responsibility towards public spaces and facilities. It occurred to him that if generations kept growing up the same way without a mind-shift, there will be very little scope for real change.

He decided to do something about it.

Navtej is a trained dancer, choreographer and a yoga exponent. He is trained in Bharatanatyam at Kalakshetra, Chennai, the Shriram Bhartiya Kala Kendra, New Delhi, and have graduated from New York University in Performance Studies. Being a dancer and a yoga practitioner, his perspective is very body-centric; and he finds Indian cities to be disrespectful if not contemptuous of the human body.

He started to plan a project that would target the callous attitude of us Indians, both the authorities and the citizens, using children as catalysts and thus the Power of Seeing Project was born. In an interview with OMShare, elaborating on his project, Mr. Johar says, “The project facilitates school children and young adults to ADOPT a street element in their neighbourhood and document its history over an extended period of time. It involves honing the child’s observation skills, teaching documentation and presentation skills, facilitating them to share their findings with their school mates through exhibitions and presentations.” This will go a long way to connect the child to his/her environment and to become care takers of their environment and proactive agents of change.

In a typical project, the children choose an element (a lamp post, manhole, edge of a pavement, traffic signal, signage and particularly work under construction or repair); they are encouraged to find something in their immediate neighbourhood so as to ensure easy supervision. They are provided a pre-formatted report card with a space to stick a photo of the chosen element, draw a map to indicate its exact location and a grid to grade the condition of the element (if or not it is convenient, safe, user-friendly, well made/maintained, perfunctory, useless etc). The card has a lip on its edge to which other such cards can be glued to make a long panel on which a series of photos of the same element taken at intervals over a period of time can be pasted. Thus is pre-designed to convert the document into an exhibition panel that speaks for itself.

For the last two years, Studio Abhyas team has been working in select schools. The current focus is on developing educational tools and toys, educational films/videos, methodologies & solution-oriented exercises through a series of workshops with experts from various fields aimed at making the child more design-sensitive, skill-oriented, observant, organized and interactive with the environment. Studio Abhyas will also be lobbying for the inclusion of the Humane Urban Design Project as a part of school curriculum.

We at OMShare think that this a great thing that the Project is not about pointing fingers, it is about being connected to the environment, taking care of it as one’s own and being responsible and WATCHFUL. The Power of Seeing project is a part of Habitat Summit. If you interested in what they are doing or want to know more, you can catch them at India Habitat Center from 24th till 26th September 2009.