UnBox

A Festival of Action at the Intersections www.unboxfestival.com Supported by:

UnBox IS A FESTIVAL CELEBRATING ACTION AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES. IT IS AN ATTEMPT TO BUILD MOMENTUM AROUND DESIGN THINKING AND INTER-DISCIPLINARY COLLABORATIONS AS THE MEANS OF DRIVING MORE SUSTAINABLE AND IMPACTIVE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN INDIA. THE FESTIVAL BLENDS WORK AND PLAY ACROSS CONTEXTS AND MEDIUMS, BRINGING ATTENDEES TOGETHER FOR WORKSHOPS, DEBATES, BRAINSTORMS, PICNICS, LITERARY READINGS AND TRAVEL. TOGETHER, WE’LL RETHINK AND STRETCH DESIGN PRACTICE. UNBOX CREATES A SPACE FOR PRACTITIONERS TO LEARN FROM ONE ANOTHER AND SPARK NEW FORMS OF SOCIAL AND CULTURAL INNOVATION. ORGANIZERS > THE BOX COLLECTIVE UnBox is the culmination of efforts of four successful Indian creative practices that have exemplified the value of inter-disciplinary collaborations as the means of driving impact and change. Together these studios form the The Box Collective: » Quicksand (www.quicksand.co.in) : A multi-disciplinary innovation consultancy based in Delhi & Bangalore in India. » Codesign (www.codesign.in) : A multi-faceted branding, and communication design practice. » Basic Love of Things - B.L.O.T. (www.blottin.blogspot.com) : An electronic music and visual arts collective bringing the Basic Love of Things to India and the world. » BlindBoys (www.blindboys.org) : A photo commune.

UnBOX IS A TWO WEEK FESTIVAL CONSISTING OF: FELLOWSHIPS CONFERENCE PUBLIC EVENTS UnBox FELLOWSHIP: Intensive, multi- AUDIENCE day travel workshops for accomplished Our audience is diverse, and includes and emerging practitioners from fields of designers, entrepreneurs, educators, design, business, art, social sciences and activists, and policy makers interested in technology. Chosen fellows would travel interdisciplinary approaches to cultural to different parts of the country to learn, intervention. We seek to bring together inform and share the new contexts for both senior and emerging practitioners social, cultural and business innovations. working in India, along with selected Inaugural year themes include urban international attendees. sanitation, safe water, organic food, Old Delhi in new media, livelihoods in TENTATIVE VENUES Kumaon and clean energy. » Alliance Française Lodi Estate, New Delhi UnBox CONFERENCE: Attendees will » Lokayata Gallery kickoff 2 days with panels introducing Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi and debating design, innovation, cultural » The Greenhouse change, and alternative platforms for Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi action. » Smaller studio venues distributed across New Delhi & Gurgaon UnBox PUBLIC EVENTS: Conference attendees and the general public can UnBox WILL HAPPEN IN PARALLEL join 3 afternoons of exhibitions, panels, WITH TECHNODROME, an arts and skill shares, and performances in various music festival, and BEAT REPEAT, a Delhi settings. Themes include book literary festival. Events among the three making, social impact in education and festivals will be cross-promoted and experiments with food. coordinated to allow UnBox festival goers to intersect with these other vibrant experiences.

SAMPLE PROGRAM FEBURARY 2011 CONFERENCE EVENT FESTIVAL EVENT PRE-FESTIVAL ● UnBox Fellowship Field Trips: Intensive, multi-day travel workshops for accomplished and emerging practitioners. Inaugural year themes include organic food in India, Old Delhi in new media, design entrepreneurship in India, and livelihoods in Kumaon. ●I Small Books: A curated exhibition of independent book design and publishing at Greenhouse, Hauz Khas Village. THUR / 24 ● Exhibition—Indian Design at the Intersections begins and goes for two weeks at Lokayata Gallery. ● Welcome Kick-off Party ● Beat Repeat, Technodrome: Cultural and Music experiences FRI / 25 ● Design as a Cultural Force: MP Ranjan offers a historical perspective on design as a force for cultural change in India, offering unusual paths into the future. ● Creative Collectives Showcase: A curated showcase of Indian startups, collectives, and individuals who offer innovative models and processes for their unique contexts. These new, self-assured Indian collectives include artists, educators, and entrepreneurs. ● Improvisation at the intersections: A theater workshop offers attendees a space to sharpen their skills of expression, responsivity, and adaptation. ● Skill shares: A series of hands-on workshops where people can share specific skills from across a number of disciplines. ● Beat Repeat, Technodrome: Cultural and Music experiences SAT / 26 ● Alternative Design Platforms: Talk and panel curated by John Thackara on how designers can work in new ways to meet the challenges of complexity, global connection, and environmental degradation? ● Futureforms: Ten curated, 5-minute presentations of possible futures to provoke and inspire attendees. ● Documenting Design: Handmade in India co-author Aditi Ranjan speaks about the roles documentation can play in design work at the intersections of government, industry, crafts, and art. ● Skill shares: A series of hands-on workshops where people can share specific skills from across a number of disciplines. ● Beat Repeat, Technodrome: Cultural and Music experiences SUN / 27 ● Make-a-thon: For conference goers inclined to tinker and hack, the UnBox Make-a-thon is a collaborative, cross-platform space for innovative creation, open to the public. ● Beat Repeat, Technodrome: Cultural and Music experiences POST FESTIVAL ● Produce and disseminate documentation in form of a blog and limited-run publication recording process and outcomes of all festival sessions.

CONFERENCE SPEAKERS JOHN THACKARA: Described by Business Week as “one of the great voices on sustainability,” Thackara is a writer, speaker, and founder-director of the Doors of Perception conference. He is author of In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World (MIT Press). M P RANJAN: M P Ranjan has been named amongst the top twenty design thinkers of the world (Design Thinking Exchange). M P Ranjan is an Independent academic from Ahmedabad. He is the author of the blog Design for India, and the book Bamboo & Cane Crafts of Northeast India, and co-editor of Handmade in India. LAKSHMI MURTHY: Internationally awarded communication designer Murthy has designed visuals sensitive to cultural and societal norms for non-literate and low-literate audiences. She heads Vikalp Design, based in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India. ADITI RANJAN: Aditi Ranjan is a weaver, textile designer, and design teacher at the National Institute of Design since 1972. Following her interests in Craft, Culture and Design Research, she co-edited Handmade in India— an encyclopedia of the handicrafts of India. AYUSH CHAUHAN: Ayush Chauhan is the Founder & Director of Quicksand, a multi-disciplinary innovation consultancy whose clients include Google, IDEO, and Gates Foundation. An IIM-A graduate, with past experience in brand & product management stint for Banking, Ayush is a firm believer in cross-disciplinary collaborations as the means of doing meaningful and impactful work NICO MACDONALD: Nico Macdonald is a London based writer and strategist focusing on innovation in the media sector. He conducted early investigations into the emergence of interaction design for online media, publishing in Eye, Blueprint, Creative Review, Design Week, PRINT and I.D. magazine; co-programming the ground-breaking conferences Designing the Internet (1996) and Design For Usability (2000); and authoring What is Web Design? (RotoVision, 2003). HARSH PUROHIT: Harsh Purohit, the Founder Director of Cognito, is a sustainability strategist. He has developed the ‘4Ps of Sustainability - Profits, Protests, Policies and Preservation’, a framework for helping diverse sections of society understand sustainability, internalize it and implement it.

FELLOWSHIPS Travel to different parts of the country with multi- disciplinary teams to learn, inform and share the new contexts for social, cultural and business innovations. ORGANIC FOOD IN INDIA: The growth of organic food is a global trend that is slowly but surely finding its way into India. There is a nascent ecosystem of players in India: farmers, consumers, retailers, health and policy experts who are involved in this ecosystem. We hope to study this context through a multi-disciplinary lens and identify opportunities for innovation—in order to get the organic food ecosystem to flourish within India. OLD DELHI > NEW MEDIA: This fellowship project is located within the spatial and conceptual dimensions of Old Delhi and what was once the Walled City. This fellowship project is an attempt to create new audiovisual content that expresses a compact experience of this area through multiple forms of media, including a live performance. LIVELIHOODS IN KUMAUN: Chirag (Central Himalayan Rural Action Group) is a rural development organization based in the Kumaun region of Uttarakhand in India. The fellowship project is an attempt to identify design intervention opportunities in Chirag’s endeavor to provide livelihood, education, and health. CLEAN ENERGY: This fellowship explores the fledgling landscape of clean & renewable energy in India. It is an immersive 3-4 day trip that works with a green entrepreneur in thinking through the challenges of their enterprise. Potential contexts include a biomass plant in rural Bihar or an innovative LED lighting startup in Uttar Pradesh. SAFE WATER: This fellowship explores new distribution models and product strategies for providing safe access to clean drinking water. During this fellowship participants will engage with a not-for-profit doing distribution pilots in rural Uttar Pradesh or a large consumer durables company looking at base of the pyramid for product innovations in the South. URBAN SANITATION: This fellowship explores the transient state of urban slums in India through the lens of water and sanitation. During this fellowship participants will engage with a civil society or government agency as they work with the community in understanding and providing water & sanitation services.

PERFORMING ARTISTS // TECHNODROME » MARKUS DETMER » SILVER SEEDS » NUCLEYA Germany Switzerland India » TIMO REUBER » 4YOUREYE » KOHRA Germany Austria India » ANDY GUHL » B.L.O.T. » SATTYANANDA Switzerland India India CONTACT Mr Ayush Chauhan ayush@quicksand.co.in

UnBox

by ayushc on Jan 09, 2011

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