Course General Description

The Public Pedagogy and Art Practice pathway, develops public pedagogues who facilitate public learning acts with sensitivity through cultural practice. Students in this program will develop the ability to work with transdisciplinary creative practices for civic learning and public participation. The arts have the transformative ability to encourage and foster positive change. Especially in India the Kalakaar is often considered to be an integral part of society and is accepted as creator of rasa, the one who touches the heart and spirit of our very core. The stand up comic or the wandering mystic, the political poet or the master craftswoman who paints the walls of her community, the crafty marketing genius, the puppeteer, the radio jockey are all public pedagogues. They use public spaces and public forms of dialogue to learn and speak about the human condition. Public practices as a form of transmitting ideas that influence, communicate and provoke are age old. Simultaneously, our ability to learn from the public sphere is constant, but is not acknowledged as a valid form of education. Further, questions about the very value of mainstream education that has become devoid of culture, with its narrow focus of catering to a limited job market, has spurred multiple popular people-education-movements that emerges from cultural practice and creates cultural capital across class and geography. These are forms of public pedagogy. This pathway brings together a rich set of public practices from cultural activism, public art, urban and rural studies and local knowledge practices into an emerging area of study that looks at traditional and contemporary public creative practices that are used to educate, inspire and provoke a larger public. These forms draw from a diversity of public practices, evoke the absurd, catalyse agency for social action and emerge from many different sites of on-the-ground experimentation. They are community based, multi-age and focus on social transformation that challenges mainstream elite forms of knowledge production.

School General Description

Srishti Institute of Art, Design & Technology (Srishti) is a design school established in 1996 by the Ujwal Trust in Bangalore, India. It offers design education in Digital Video Production, Film, Visual Communication, Experimental Media Arts, Design in Education, Textile Design, Animation and Visual Effects, Interaction Design, Product and Interface Design, Furniture and Spatial Design, Business Systems and Design and much more. Srishti has a number of centers and labs that offer practice- and research-based environments for students and faculty from a multitude of disciplines. These include (in alphabetical order): BHSI – Bangalore Human Sciences Initiative CEMA – Center for Experimental Media Arts CERTAD – Centre for Education, Research, Training and Development CPH – Centre for Public History GRIDs – Grassroots Innovation Design Studio Kabir Project[5] LEDLAB – Law+Environment+Design Laboratory Srishti Films Srishti Labs DesignEARTH Lab Natural Fibres Lab Pandimonium Lab SUI-Srishti Collaborative Blank Noise Srishti's culture encourages thinking, questioning and experimenting to harness the artistic and intellectual potential of each individual and place the institution at the leading edge of contemporary art and design discourse. A multi-disciplinary approach inculcates self-initiated learning and independent thinking and expands perceptual perspectives. Regular interaction with design studios, production and distribution centers, community projects, retail establishments and industry forms a vital bridge between Srishti and the world.