Workshop: Access & Inclusion in Museums, Mehrangarh Fort Museum, Jodhpur

Workshop alert: Access and Inclusion in South and Southeast Asian Museums Venue: Mehrangarh Fort & Aana Jharna Museums, Jodhpur Dates: 28 - 30th November, 2019 Organised by: Commonwealth Association of Museums (CAM), ICOM ICTOP (International Committee for Training of Personnel) and ICOM India, in collaboration with Mehrangarh Museum Trust, Jodhpur and Maharaja Sawai Man Singh...

National Handloom Day

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay established the Crafts Council of India (CCI) in 1964. She also laid the foundation for Sangeet Natak Akademi and National School of Drama. A freedom fighter, social reformer and feminist, champion for India's women and her Handloom and Handicraft communities, this lady from Mangalore was awarded the Padma Bhushan and Padma Vibushan - the...

the #projectinterpret story

“There is nothing sadder than an empty museum. After all, the treasures belong to the nation — to everybody…Museums provide spaces to meet, with huge galleries and a chance to see things in a different way, in real life, not digitally. They can be meeting places with cafés and restaurants, as well as lecture halls...

How Accessible is India?

Back to India’s realities: In India, post my London return in 2015 November, I was upbeat about creating accessible and inclusive spaces but everything changed with the research here. I became extremely disappointed that I was not able to find visitor surveys or statistics here. Most of our museums do not even know how many...

How UK Museums are some of the most Accessible & Inclusive in the world

Depression is the leading cause of Disability in the world!!!

Roughly translated it means: “Do not mention your solitude to others you’re not the only one, everyone is lonely this journey is difficult alone...” These lines are from a longer poem for a film by Gulzar. Here he has beautifully articulated the pain of loneliness, saying we are all lonely. To me, it also means...

Have you visited your local Museum yet? We have :)

March is here, everyone will get busy with their financial work in India as this month ends the financial year here. It’s a stressful time when you realise that most of your investments have gone wrong and the essential papers are missing! For a de-stressful time, visit the local museum in your city to marvel...

The world’s nest at Santiniketan

India's first Nobel Laureate, Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore wrote in 1929: I was brought up in an atmosphere of aspiration, aspiration for the expansion of the human spirit. We in our home sought freedom of power in our language, freedom of imagination in our literature, freedom of soul in our religious creeds and that of mind...

#projectinterpret

  Do you want to sense your existence, dance with the colours, laugh with the ripples, design the moment and live some more? In 2018, VarnikaDesigns launches #projectinterpret - a multi sensory, cultural, interactive space that attempts to seek ways to know ourselves, appreciate our histories and our people, and interpret ourselves in this extremely...

With a heavy heart I write this post…

This is a post I never thought I would have to write, and have been avoiding writing for two weeks. But it is important to share with everyone as it is about a topic we love to pretend does not exist and live in denial. On 24th July, I woke up with Baba's message, "distressing...