Bengaluru: Very often, students’ projects are dubbed as being more theoretical and lacking practical experiences.
But a two-day exhibition conducted by the Azim Premji University at the Metro Art Center under the theme “Crafting Justice” was a different one. This show ensured that visitors will feel the pain of people after the project.
One of the highlights of this exhibition was it was a student-led, experience-based field project, which aimed at social justice.
Exhibited projects included engaging with the refugee status of Tibetans in Bylakuppe in Karnataka (constitutional and public law Project), the ecological impact of building a proposed port on the Aghanashini river in Kumta taluk of Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka (ecological justice project), sentencing policy particularly elements of blame with a focus on the award of death penalty in the cases of two death row convicts who are currently lodged in prison in Belagavi (criminal justice project), the challenges faced by women migrant labour from the north eastern states in the country (human rights project), the role of media in the recent Uttar Pradesh legislative assembly elections (media and politics project), everyday conceptions of the state in Gujarat and Haryana (politics and society between elections project), reforming state public service commissions in India, and many more.
This conference and exhibition marked the first time in India that experiential educators, practitioners and students got together to discuss the challenges and learning of designing, practicing and evaluating experiential education curriculum and pedagogy within the disciplines of development, law, public policy, governance and the broad social sciences and humanities.
The exhibition featured art installations, interactive and immersive experiences, documentaries, infographics and other exhibits that showcase field projects that students have worked on over the courseof an academic year.
Students at Azim Premji University have worked on these field projects for about 8 months of the academic year, and have attempted to create a modest but tangible change towards social justice. Exhibits showcased their work, the complex issues involved, and some voices from the communities involved.
The public conference comprised of panel discussions that focused on the ethical and practical challenges faced by students, academics, practitioners, and the community in carrying out such projects and in attempting to achieve social justice, that is, to do justice. The conference and the exhibition also showcased new thinking with regard to experience-based and justice-oriented models of education, the potential of this model to create social change, and strategies to sustain this model.
Vaishnavi Varadarajan, a student with the Ecological Justice Project, who worked on understanding the possible impacts of building a port at the Aghanashini estuary said, “through the work in Kumata region over the year, we were able to understand the contradictions between development and ecology, and how that gets understood in the law. “The exhibition allowed us to interact with people and spread the word that issues of social justice like this are important for everyone. People visiting the exhibition also had thought provoking questions for us, so in all – this was an exciting learning experience!”
