Community Groups:

Where:Fort High School, Bangalore, Karnataka

Why:State run English and Kannada medium school established in 1905 surrounded by cultural sites and it has taught numerous state luminaries.

When:Jul - Aug 2011

Fig above: The geographic extent of culturally significant places identified by Fort School students,with the school as the node.

View fort school.kmz in a larger map

Summary:Nakshay formally kicked off over July-Aug 2011 with a pilot at Fort High School, Bangalore.

Choice of school was deliberate - the 1905 established Government run English and Kannada medium school is housed in a colonial era structure. It is situated in the heart of the old city of Bangalore, literally surrounded by cultural heritage sites like Tipu's Summer Palace, the Oval Fort gateway, Kote Venkataramanaswamy temple, Victoria Hospital to name but a few and has taught numerous luminaries of the state...

The Sessions (We worked with students of 10th Std B Section):

I - Exploration - working with all the students of the class in the presence of their history teacher Mr.Baksh.

"Bit of a shocker at the start. After all our preparatory work and trying to find appropriate words to get students to understand that we wanted something Distinct or Unique; a student's response to 'What is special to you?", was A MALL & A FLYOVER! On hindsight it seemed very obvious that "special" to a person could be anything and need not be that which is historical or intangible. Guess we are too wrapped up in heritage and culture :) Thanks Faiyaz for opening our eyes" - Pankaj

"Kids took time to get the drift of our discussion, but once they did they surprised us with their insight!" - Aparna

II - Discussion - working with all the students in the presence of Mr Baksh.

"Zahir and Naveen had both stated Tipu's fort as special. However for Zahir what was important was the fact that it was associated with Tipu. Whereas for Naveen what was important was the fact that it was a fort - i.e. an old structure built for a particular use. Thus we were able to introduce the idea of different meanings to places / things at different times" - Krupa

III - Deliberation - working with selected students (the ones who had prepared the charts as discussed in Session II) in the presence of Mr Baksh

"Faiyaz who had named a mall in Session 1 gave us a detailed write up on what made Lalbagh and its components special to different people for different reasons... this was extremely heartening as it told us we were headed in the right direction" - Krupa