School for Wellbeing of Art & Craft Practices
What if business models were imagined not just for profit but for the well-being of the communities, crafts, traditions, and ecologies they arise from?
Our school began with the question: What would business models looks like if they were imagined not for profit only, but for the wellbeing of the communities, crafts, traditions, and ecologies they emerge from?
We see craft as an ecosystem of practices, relations, and knowledge that sustains both place and people. Socio-market pressures and demands have deeply affected artisans for the sustenance of their practices. Our work, then, is to co-create creative infrastructures that nurture these practices where enterprises grow in ways that care for crafts, their makers, and also the worlds they hold.
As part of our ongoing long term engagement, Local Techno Futures, we work with Lambani women on Gorboli that doesn't have a written script. Together, we explored how spoken sounds might be represented through embroidery - the heart of Lambani work. To begin, we chose the word Ambika. The circular mirror became the core for the open-mouthed “a.” The rhombus mirror stood in for the closed sounds “m” and “b.” Because this sound was half m and half b, we placed these mirrors closer than the others, while the bar stitch carried the vowel “e.” In this way, sounds, meanings, and stitches came together, weaving language into cloth.
The key questions that guide this school are:
- 🔎"How can we make sure that local ways of seeing and doing are the most important part of our research, instead of ideas from outside, by really understanding a specific place, its people, and its history?"
- 🔎"How can our research work with communities, especially those often overlooked, letting them lead in creating future technologies that respect their hands-on knowledge and real-life experiences?"
- 🔎"How can collaborating with diverse skills, cultures, and creative backgrounds foster innovative ideas for technology ?"
Past courses
Past
Interaction between craft communities
How communities are interdependent and are co-existing? Also how some are disappearing and what future can be imagined?
- Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
- Micro-Context: Weavers In Chittaguppa
- Micro-Context: Bamboo Weavers
- +8 More Micro-Context
- Place: Bidar
- Trimester: 02
Past
Sheheroshayiri
A place is a cradle for memories, songs, material of these crafts. We look at already existing poetry and songs, and understand from these place-writers
- Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
- Micro-Context: Creative Writing
- Micro-Context: Linguistic Works Dhakkhani Urdu Writings
- Place: Bidar
- Learning Module: Primer
- Trimester: 01
Past
Seeking Begumpura
Studio brings together STS, Anti-Caste visions and actions, and Speculative and Service-System design together to develop a critical-creative practice of service / experience design.
- Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
- Place: Bidar
- Learning Module: Practicum
- Trimester: 01
Past
Calligraphy and Correspondence
Learning the Nastaliq script from local calligraphers
- Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
- Place: Bidar
- Learning Module: Workshop
- Trimester: 01
Past
Flavors of Memory: Archiving food stories and recipes’
12 – 15 Mar 2026
By learning closely with community practitioners, we co-create archives that foreground community voices while reflecting on their own food memories, positioning archiving as a practice of care and responsibility.
- Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
- Micro-Context: Communities With Rhc
- Learning Module: Make-a-thon
- Trimester: 03
Past
Living Crafts: Craft, Community & Wellbeing
9 Feb – 4 Apr 2026
We will investigate the resilience of these craft practices, tracking its evolution in the region, where it relied on place-based practices and natural resources, to its necessary adaptation.
- Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
- Place: Bidar
- Learning Module: Practicum
- Trimester: 03
Past
Maternal archives of songs
6 – 14 Oct 2025
Learn with the community to document birth practices, lullabies, remedies, taboos, and learn how to produce narratives
- Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
- Micro-Context: Beesugallu
- Micro-Context: Cradle Songs
- +2 More Micro-Context
- Place: Bidar
- Learning Module: Primer
- Trimester: 02