Community Groups:

Where:MES College, Bangalore, Karnataka

Why:Privately run premier education institution established in 1956-57 in the heart of Malleswaram, one of Bangalore's historic neighbourhoods and thriving cultural quarter.

When:Jan - Mar 2012

Fig above: The geographic extent of culturally significant places identified by MES students with the college as the node.

View MES college.kmz in a larger map

Summary:Nakshay next moved to MES college to work with different student groups through the Malleswaram Accessibility Project

Choice of college was deliberate - the 1956 established private institution is situated in the heart of Malleswaram, one of the city's historic cultural quarters, the area was and is home to many cultural luminaries like Sir C V Raman, Veena Doreswamy Iyengar, Chitrashilpi Venkatappa, Film-maker Krishnaswamy, Poet G P Rajaratnam and other well known names.

The Sessions (We worked with B.SC and B.Com students):

I - Explore - interactive session with different student groups to understand their perspective on culture and what they consider culturally significant in their surroundings.

"We were quickly able to introduce the concept of values and that multiple values like educational, historical, cultural, community, social, age etc could be assigned to the same object..." - Pankaj

II - Understand - group discussion to understand individual perspectives in more depth.

"having got used to working with school children, it was a bit of a challenge to reach out to young adults...but we made it work" - Krupa

III - Reach out - out of the classroom and into the community.

"It was great to be able to get out into the field to discuss various aspects of an individual's choice rather than restricting the sessions to a classroom. I guess this was possible as we were working with an older group" - Krupa