Community Engagement

A crucial aspect of the OMHI research project is community engagement. Through in-person and digital interactions, the project draws on the active involvement of Pune's architects, contractors, engineers, construction workers, and their descendants, to co-create histories of working lives, technology, and political economy as they unfolded on construction sites and influenced the development of urban spaces.

In collaboration with the multidisciplinary collective Curating for Culture we identify the necessary frameworks and ethics for community engagement from one focus group to another, design exhibitions and pop-up installations, program workshops, and conceptualise social media interactions. Our iterative and multilingual approach to the engagements brought many unknown stories to life, and highlighted critical issues !

OMHI’s community engagement events and social media interactions would not be possible without the help of extra hands and minds. These include graduates in Architectural History and Research from CEPT University (Richa Shah, Kairavi Maniar, Binita Bose, and Shivani M.), the wonderful team of the Pune Architectural History Archive (Gaurav Kalyani, Namita K., Aarya Ghotikar) and collaborators for translation/transcription (Priyanka Mangaonkar, Gauri Joglekar, Shweta Shetty, Ajinkya Lele) and audio-video communication design (Aarya Pathak).

Workshop & Pop-up exhibit
Remembering Pune’s Construction Workers

Workshop
Recollecting Histories of Pune’s Engineers and Builders

Teaching
MAHR Research Studio

Workshop
ORAL HISTORY