The Neighbourhood Project is inspired by PUKAR’s larger vision of documentation as an act of intervention. It invites students and other citizens to write ethnographies and histories of their own localities and neighborhoods. Using the lens of biography and family history, the project documents visual (using photographs and videos) as well textual data (in the form of essays and stories), valuing the special ability of such knowledge to provide an unusual, interior perspective on the sociology and history of the city.

The Khotachiwadi Neighbourhood Project
Funded by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region - Heritage Conservation Society
2003-2004

This project was an experimental one that engaged with the concerns of the city’s Heritage Conservation Society. It focused on Khotachiwadi, a cluster of cottages and bungalows in the crowded (now becoming a high-rise) neighbourhood of Girgaum in south Mumbai that has been declared a “Heritage Precinct” in architectural terms.

The PUKAR Neighbourhood Project invited its residents to collectively narrate and reflect on Khotachiwadi’s history and express it in varied forms. The idea the project sold to the Heritage Conservation society was that this exercise would yield a more subjective engagement with the idea of heritage by paying attention to the presence of individuals and families who have an intimate relationship with its built form that happens to have a special public and civic status as a heritage site. It asserted that unless one taps on such an engagement with the residents, the actual upkeep, maintenance and future conservation of the habitat cannot really be ensured.

The neighbourhood project has yielded a short film, “Portraits of a Lane”, a set of twelve post-cards, a comic-book series that is based on narratives produced by its residents, posters, a website – www.khotachiwadi.org – audio and video records and a textual history of Khotachiwadi.

The project also yielded a set of arguments and debates about the idea of heritage itself. These have been compiled in a report co-written by Vyjayanthi Rao (Co-Director of PUKAR and PUKAR Associate), Pankaj Joshi (PUKAR Associate) and Rahul Srivastava (Co-Director of PUKAR, PUKAR Associate and Neigbourhood Project Coordinator) that has been submitted to UNESCO, titled “Habitat, Heritage and Diversity”.

The project concluded in September 2004.

Marathi Public Sphere

Marathi public sphere initiative intended to reach out to Marathi speaking population of Mumbai.

Through film screenings, workshops and discussions with writers, artists, journalists and activists in Mumbai PUKAR seeks to foreground debates that characterize the Marathi Public Sphere and explore the current social realities in the Marathi Public Sphere.

Tarunaee (Marathi Public Sphere Youth Initiative)
Funded by Sir Ratan Tata Trust
2004-2005 

“Tarunaee” - the Marathi word stands for youth and signifies the innovative energy of youth. The project was aimed at engaging the youth in self and locality documentation to articulate their concerns about urban life. It explored the process of research and documentation as tools for pedagogy and social intervention.

The participants were Marathi speaking youth associated with various organizations – educational, government and non-government. They represented diverse socio-economic and educational strata and had no previous experience. They worked in groups on themes relevant to their experiences. The broad themes were - environment, language, migration, sexuality and globalization.

For their documentation, the participants made innovative use of various media such as photography, songs, interviews, paintings and poems. To view these documentations click here.

The process has also been documented into a Marathi book “Paach prashna shambhar uttare” PUKAR partnered with following organizations for this project

• Mobile Creches
• Maharashtra Nature Park
• Girangao Rojgar Hakk Samiti
• R.A.Podar College of Commerce and Economics
• St.Joseph College