Participatory design
S3C2
Team - Vertical Studio (Jay Kanti, Shriya Parab, Nisha Shinde, Maitri Shah, Prarthna Shah)

Yeh Hamara Ghar Hai  :  A Neighbourhood Museum in a Resettlement & Rehabilitation Colony of Govandi, Mumbai.

This course was undertaken with the Community Design Agency ( CDA ), a collective of designers and architects working for community.

The history rarely reflects the working class people, and majorly highlights the political upheavals, wars and catastrophes of past. This course focused on documenting history of some of the “middle” class people of the Natwar Parekh Colony and creating a Neighbourhood Museum of their life journey, which allowed them to interact with their stories.

The course started with various small exercises in the class, which would help us in interviewing people in the colony. What is the role of Consent and Comfort in a dialogue/ interview? What all factors affect the response of interviewee? and ideas of hierarchy in the society were explored. We also understood that in order to gain the other person’s trust and make them comfortable to reveal their stories, to some random person who appeared out of nowhere, we had to be informal and share ourselves to them.

The next stage involved fieldwork and interviewing different people of the colony. Parveen Ji, a well-known social-worker of the area, gave us an overview of the history of the people and helped us with meeting the families and navigating through the colony. Stories of people from 4 different communities were collected and presented - 
The Marathis, The Bihari Muslims, The Adivasis and The South Indians. An important observation was that, the women of the family were the ones with whom we interacted, rather than the men of the house. The women in the colony have been much more active in the society work than the men.
Being a part of the Marathi community group, we learnt the past of 4 families. Stories of Sangeeta Aunty, Megha Aunty, Vaijanta Aunty and Gangu Aunty were presented in the form of Zines and a copy of which was also handed over to them on the day of museum exhibit.