Courses

Bioregional Cultures: Sacred Sites, Ecology and Syncretism

Delving into the historical inter-linkages of community sacred sites and the surrounding ecologies. A look into myths, legends, and how locally rooted rituals-practices help us understand the micro social and ecological relationships.

• Schools For Concentration: Syncretic Cultures & Practices
• Micro-Context: Muhharam Padagalu
• Micro-Context: Local History
• +4 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Place: Gulbarga
• Learning Module: Deliberate Practice

Interaction between craft communities

How communities are interdependent and are co-existing? Also how some are disappearing and what future can be imagined?

• Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
• Micro-Context: Weavers In Chittaguppa
• Micro-Context: Bamboo Weavers
• +8 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Trimester: 02

Participatory Mapping with People, Bidar and the internet: Tools and Technologies

Public maps and knowledge of places may often be centralised and made with intents not from the people: What tools and technologies can we use to subvert and reimagine maps and the representation of knowledge of places. Learners will work with community collaborators and technologies.

• Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
• Micro-Context: Ecology In Urban Spaces
• Micro-Context: Old Residences
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Deliberate Practice

Experimenting With Interactivity

Course will be available soon! Our courses are collaboratively designed in the field, that takes time. Fellows are currently weaving their practices to carefully think and articulate the purpose of the course and meaningful learning outcomes. Many a times these happen to be our learning interests too in a place. We invite learners who share similar curiosities as us irrespective of their practice-research interests or backgrounds. Our course design draws from never-ending learning possibilities

• Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
• Learning Module: Primer

Data Politics

Learning Module: Primers Abstract / Short description: Understanding data practices and how it affects communities? How is data/knowledge/media/archives built and maintained in communities? Tangible media/data as ownership? Ethics, governance and ownership. Concentration: Reimagining Technology Learning Mode: Baithak, Learning with Materials (from the place), Public Engagement Micro-Context: Ancient Stone Inscriptions of Bidar, Citizen Curators (Local Collectors), Dakkhani Art & Literature, Khat

• Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
• Micro-Context: Ancient Stone Inscriptions Of Bidar
• Micro-Context: Citizen Curators Local Collectors
• +4 More Micro-Context

Speculative Design: Anticipating Consequences

Explores how to weave tightly the critical and the creative in early design process through drawing from Speculative & Critical design methods.

• Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
• Micro-Context: Yelahanka
• Place: Yelahanka
• Learning Module: Deliberate Practice
• Trimester: 01

Seeking Begumpura

Studio brings together STS, Anti-Caste visions and actions, and Speculative and Service-System design together to develop a critical-creative practice of service / experience design.

• Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Practicum
• Trimester: 01

Rural Series: Pastoralism and land

A travel based learning of Pastoral migration, and it’s unique knowledge and exchanges shared with the local land, migratory routes and places.

• Schools For Concentration: Syncretic Cultures & Practices
• Place: Gulbarga
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Travelling Studio
• Trimester: 01

Jatre as a communal practice

Jatre are a moment for large public gatherings that intertwines cultural practices, religious festivals and local economy. In this travelling studio series we will learn from culturally rooted practice of Jatre in Bidar region

• Schools For Concentration: Syncretic Cultures & Practices
• Micro-Context: Allamma Prabhu Jathre
• Micro-Context: Jatre
• +1 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Travelling Studio
• Trimester: 02

Micro Histories and Alternative Presents of Visual Cultures of Bidar

Mapping & Understanding the living practices of Visual Cultures in Bidar and their production. And collaboratively exploring possible alternative presents (and futures) of the practices.

• Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
• Micro-Context: Ceramic Tile Works Local Influence
• Micro-Context: Ancient Stone Inscriptions Of Bidar
• +3 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Core Pathway
• Trimester: 01

Whose Land and Whose Development?

A collective inquiry to understand the nexus the social factors, politics and policies framework behind green energy projects affecting commons & wildlife habitat, shrinking grasslands and Patoralism.

• Schools For Concentration: Sensitive Ecologies
• Micro-Context: Solar Farms
• Micro-Context: Unsustainable Urbanisation
• +1 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Trimester: 01

Syncretic cultures in Dakkhani Architectural Heritage

An inquiry into syncretic cultures of Deccan Sultanate through the legacy of the architectural heritage and history of the region.

• Micro-Context: Bawdi
• Micro-Context: Gulbarga Fort
• +4 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Place: Bijapur
• Place: Gulbarga
• Learning Module: Travelling Studio
• Trimester: 01

Sheheroshayiri

A place is a cradle for memories, songs, material of these crafts. We look at already existing poetry and songs, and understand from these place-writers

• Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
• Micro-Context: Creative Writing
• Micro-Context: Linguistic Works Dhakkhani Urdu Writings
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Primer
• Trimester: 01

Place as Archive - Syncretic Cultures

In this practicum we will reimagine the idea of an archive as something that's alive and evolving. This module will directly learn from and contribute to Bidar Heritage Centre Archives, our long-term infrastructuring engagement.

• Schools For Concentration: Syncretic Cultures & Practices
• Micro-Context: Agrarian Practices
• Micro-Context: Agrarian Festivals
• +2 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Deliberate Practice
• Trimester: 01

Mapping Community Systems of Wellbeing

A Geo-spatial mapping of formal & informal systems of community health and wellbeing, annotated with stories of lived experiences that highlight the practices of negotiation & navigation

• Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
• Micro-Context: Tribal Settlements
• Micro-Context: Agrarian Practices
• Learning Module: Workshop
• Trimester: 01

Community Health Systems

Introduces the formal & informal health systems that exist in Kundapura and Bidar (as specific cases), and how people navigate across these systems to manage their health and wellbeing

• Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
• Micro-Context: Asha Workers
• Micro-Context: Community Based Healthcare Practices
• +1 More Micro-Context
• Place: Kundapura
• Place: Yelahanka
• Learning Module: Primer
• Trimester: 01

Calligraphy and Correspondence

Learning the Nastaliq script from local calligraphers

• Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Workshop
• Trimester: 01

Alternative Glossaries: Water systems in ONEs

23 – 26 Mar 2026

Learn to develop a glossary that will communicate the diversity of life, conditions, and uses it holds for both humans and other ecology.

• Schools For Concentration: Sensitive Ecologies
• Micro-Context: Water Systems
• Micro-Context: Restoration And Conservation Of Karez
• Trimester: 03

Flavors of Memory: Archiving food stories and recipes’

12 – 15 Mar 2026

By learning closely with community practitioners, we co-create archives that foreground community voices while reflecting on their own food memories, positioning archiving as a practice of care and responsibility.

• Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
• Micro-Context: Communities With Rhc
• Learning Module: Make-a-thon
• Trimester: 03

Invisible Labour - Visible Consequences: Understanding women’s collective, labour and participation in local governance systems

9 – 13 Mar 2026

This workshop focuses on learning about women’s role and labour in Sanjeevini Sanghas, Panchayats, Krishi Kendras, Grama Panchayat and other PRIs that have been crucial to the development and wellbeing of people and places.

• Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
• Micro-Context: Agricultural Practices
• Micro-Context: Sanjeevini Sanghas
• +1 More Micro-Context
• Place: Kundapura
• Learning Module: Workshop
• Trimester: 03

Panchayats & Participatory Futures: Local Self-Governance & Water in Aluru

8 – 11 Mar 2026

How does a Gram Panchayat - the fundamental unit of democratic self-governance, and closest to the people - plan, build, maintain and sustain infrastructures of and for its public?

• Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
• Micro-Context: Tribal Settlements
• Learning Module: Make-a-thon
• Trimester: 03

Techno-Biographies: Imaginations of Citizens & Places in Governance Technologies

3 Mar – 11 Apr 2026

What imaginations of citizens do governance technologies centre, and intend to operationalise at scale? If and how are these imaginations are rooted in a place?

• Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
• Place: Bangalore
• Learning Module: Primer
• Trimester: 03

Living Crafts: Craft, Community & Wellbeing

9 Feb – 4 Apr 2026

We will investigate the resilience of these craft practices, tracking its evolution in the region, where it relied on place-based practices and natural resources, to its necessary adaptation.

• Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Practicum
• Trimester: 03

Making to understand Panchayat

18 – 21 Dec 2025

How does a Gram Panchayat - the fundamental unit of democratic self-governance, and closest to the people - plan, build, maintain and sustain infrastructures of and for its public?

• Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
• Micro-Context: Tribal Settlements
• Learning Module: Make-a-thon

Listening to a place

2 – 5 Dec 2025

This course will be about listening to a place, recording it and sampling it. Students will engage with different modes of listening — from embodied to contextual listening, i.e., listening and sensing with their bodies to listening as a way to learn about a place, its history and politics.

• Schools For Concentration: Sensitive Ecologies
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Make-a-thon
• Trimester: 02

Assembling the plural world

3 – 14 Nov 2025

Artefacts embedded in a place are containers of shared experiences among communities. In this unit we will assemble narratives through cultural artefacts to initiate a public dialogue.

• Schools For Concentration: Syncretic Cultures & Practices
• Micro-Context: Community Histories Practices Dhors
• Micro-Context: Community Histories Practices Gowli
• +2 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Deliberate Practice
• Trimester: 02

Mapping to understand socio-ecological phenomena in the place

26 Oct – 1 Nov 2025

This workshop will explore the socioecological system of this transect in with maps as a tool, guide and an artefact that documents observations, and communicates the entangled nature of these systems.

• Schools For Concentration: Sensitive Ecologies
• Micro-Context: Ecology In Urban Spaces
• Micro-Context: Agrarian Practices
• +11 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Workshop
• Trimester: 02

Local culinary practices, nutrition and wellbeing

11 – 16 Oct 2025

Cooking is more than taste, it is everyday knowledge of care, health, and sustenance shaped by place, culture, and community. In this travelling studio, we learn by tasting, listening, and moving through kitchens.

• Schools For Concentration: Community Wellbeing
• Micro-Context: Fishmarkets
• Micro-Context: Food Habits In Sa Cluster
• +1 More Micro-Context
• Place: Gangolli
• Place: Kundapura
• Learning Module: Travelling Studio
• Trimester: 02

Maternal archives of songs

6 – 14 Oct 2025

Learn with the community to document birth practices, lullabies, remedies, taboos, and learn how to produce narratives

• Schools For Concentration: Art & Craft Practices
• Micro-Context: Beesugallu
• Micro-Context: Cradle Songs
• +2 More Micro-Context
• Place: Bidar
• Learning Module: Primer
• Trimester: 02

Artefact as Method

6 – 31 Oct 2025

Learning to intently engage to understand the relational changes occuring in a place using artefact as a method to question, critique, imagine alternates and learn.

• Schools For Concentration: Reimagining Technology
• Micro-Context: Yelahanka
• Learning Module: Primer
• Trimester: 02