An insider's view of the Jaipur Design Week, 2024 at JKLU.
Jaipur Design Week, 11th March to 17th March, was a delight, not just for JKLU University that organized the week-long celebrations but for everyone who participated and enjoyed the events across Jaipur. Spearheaded by A Balasubramaniam, Director of the Institute of Design, JKLU, ably and enthusiastically supported by the students and Faculty of the department, the Open Studios, Workshops, film shows, and talks made each day matter. The academic quotient was wonderfully balanced with the fun and enjoyment, not just for people of Jaipur, but for weekend visitors, who made most of their short visit to the green campus on the outskirts of the Pink city.
To begin at the beginning, the idea, planning and green flagging for the Jaipur Design Week, must have started with the blessings and carte blanche by the VC of JKLU, Mr. Dheeraj Sanghi. It was surprisingly pleasant to meet a Vice Chancellor of a prestigious University, who wears his designation with such ease. While you are fully aware of his seniority and place in the campus, it is easy to forget that, while he sits among Faculty at mealtimes, very easily breaking down hierarchy to a flat level and including everyone in the conversation, and he has a lot of stories of his travels to share. A good storyteller always gets my attention and admiration.
Bala, as he’s called by everyone, everywhere, manages to look as if he is doing nothing important, while managing a million things to make the Jaipur Design Week work as well as it did. Like a duck, that appears to be placidly swimming, yet furiously paddling beneath the surface. Perhaps, it is his ability to assign work and delegate responsibility, by including other people and institutions in the planning and execution. His energy, bonhomie and enthusiasm percolated across people and places in Jaipur, carrying the quintessence of JDW, along with the banner at the evening events outside JKLU campus.
At the at AKFD studio, at IICD, at Alliance Francaise, at Anantaya Courtyard, Narayan Niwas, where events under the Jaipur Design week umbrella were held in the evenings, it was not just the familiar faces of students, Faculty and Designers that made it feel like seamless single event, for which Jaipur institutes were collaborating on making the JDW a memorable and magical celebration.
The inauguration of the Jaipur Design Week was by Prof Vijay Kumar, from the Professor Emeritus of Illinois Institute of Technology's Design School, at AKFD studio on 10th evening. The event was double delight, with a chance to visit the Furniture Design Studio, meet the designer duo, Geetanjali and Ayush Kasliwal, and listen to two talks by Prof Vijay and the other Banana Chat with Sonali Bhagwati.
Prof Vijay distilled his years as a designer and design teacher into succinct points that made so much sense in making design relevant and leave a lasting impact. His very first point, on humanizing innovation made me recall my dear friend Ela Bhatt and the very first article in the book we brought out together, before we lost her in November 2022.
Prof Vijay said that design had moved ahead from the times people were making pretty things. Now we must think of how to make things for other people, understand and respond to change lives. This can be possible, by understanding your clients mind, biases, and anxieties. Borrowing tools from psychology, Designer learnt that Everyone has a story. You must listen, understand, respond by capturing the stories and for this the at of listening is very important. Don’t go with a questionnaire when you talk to clients, use the nudge of tell me more, to encourage them to speak.
“Capture the gold” was his advice. He explained their interaction with local Chicago community, in a bid to reduce gun violence, which entailed a lot of conversation, active listening and community events. An innovation should feel like a gift from a friend who knows you. This is how empathy can be enmeshed in the innovation process, he said. Do greater good, should be a motto for designers to work on.
We also had the pleasure of meeting Aisha Nair Vijay, who knows a lot about Design and designers, having been around them for so long. What could we call someone like her, who has absorbed so much by osmosis, as it were? Passive designer doesn’t work as it does in passive smoking. We must invent a new term, I think!
Geetanjali and Ayush, who hosted the evening at their AKFD studio have so much to their name, that its not possible to capture even a fraction of it. While we were shown around their studio, their hospitality and organization made the evening a perfect beginning to the week ahead.
The Open Studio Electives
The Four Day Open Studios were electives that the students of JKLU could choose from. I know the insider’s view from my own module, Ek aur Anek, where I took the students through various media, teaching them to explore various ways of expressing an idea. They were a wonderful, talented, enthusiastic, affectionate bunch and I enjoyed going through all the assignments we did together.
Many photographers who were documenting the Design week activities in various studios, skipped our classroom, as most of the time, the students were busy, heads down at their desk, writing furiously. But if only they could read and relish what they shared, it would have been a revelation of their talent and diversity.
A big shout out to Akshata, Angel, Arjodeep, Divya, Himanshi, Kratika, Manaswini, Naomi, Priyanka, Shruti, Reefah, Yukthart, Anushree, Sneha, Nisarg, Shivesh, Megha, and Nehal, for making the four days filled with so much fun and learning, and making it a vertical and horizontal learning experience, sharing your languages and lives!
The horizontal method of learning, with students teaching each other, is one of my favourite class exercises while teaching Foundation students at NID, Paldi. At NID as in JKLU Design Institute, there are students from across the country who are like a microcosm of the country’s diversity. It was an idea that I picked up while reading about Gandhi’s early work in South Africa.
The only other Open studio that everyone knew about is the one by Jinal and Jo who were offering a module on Collaborative perception. Their open studio was actually out in the open, as they were, with their students painting a humongous wall together. It was a joy to see the magic unfold, as they created the space, energy, method and music to a collective expression of personalities, as perceived by the participants and painted on the wall. Jinal and Jo are a couple that make you realize that two people with totally different backgrounds, languages and personalities can synchronize their work and personal lives so beautifully, because their value systems, vision and long-term goals match so well.
The Open Studio kept us busy and happily engaged all day from 11th to the 14th. Although students had chosen their preferred module ahead of time, there was some last-minute swapping as most of the modules looked so interesting. 18-20 students in each module seemed to be perfect to be able to give full attention and know each student well. They were a mix from the Foundation course, Product Design, Integrated communication design, and Interactive design. I made new groups for each class activity, asking them to pick blindly each time from a bag full of different things: candies, ball pens, erasers, that were colour coded, so that they had a different group for every assignment.
Over the years of teaching, I have found this to be a happy way of making small groups. Their speed and enthusiasm for each assignment accelerated with each passing day.
Besides the class assignments of communicating an idea across various media, we also tried a small experiment of spreading happiness. Some days ago, a writer friend, Merril Deniz posted an extract from a new book by the famous Economist Kaushik Basu, called Reason to be happy. It was a wonderful read and led me to buy the book. It also triggered a memory of something I had read during the lockdown days, about put-pocketing, a play on pickpocketing, where you anonymously put a little something in people’s pocket to cheer them up. It had stayed in my mind, and I was waiting to try it. The campus, the buzz of the Design Week, and the enthusiastic students helped us to carry out this Put pocketing with packets of Gems. I asked them to take a picture wherever possible.
It turned out to be good fun, as they tried various ways of put pocketing, on gardeners, security staff, roommates, faculty, and friends.
As could be expected, the reactions were mixed, some people were delighted, some nonchalant, some in an instant happy zone. The reward was seeing the flash of joy on people’s faces as the anonymity was maintained in most cases.
Comic Making Workshop
My half day comic making workshop was open to the students of JKLU and also for students from other colleges in Jaipur. It was a delight to have several students of Jaipur National College, with their Design Faculty, Divya Sharma, as well as faculty and students from JKLU working fast and furiously in creating a one-page comic from their own life experiences. Although the brief and exercise were meant to just creating the comic script format, most of them were succumbed to the temptation of drawing in detail or stick drawings. In the half hour, many little snippets of their life were shared through the workshop.
Making comics is as much fun as reading them, was the message I wanted to share, and I think that was apparent from the output. But maybe that message and method deserves a separate post of its own!
Learning with fun and art itself gives a lot of encouragement to the students. especially from the experienced faculties. Good effort 👌 wish you all the best 👍
Asir
Learning with fun and art itself gives a lot of encouragement to the students. especially from the experienced faculties. Good effort 👌 wish you all the best 👍
Asir