Living Labs Institute

Fellows

Shreyas Srivatsa

I am a transdisciplinary learner, educator, researcher and practitioner with an interest in infrastructuring place-based knowledge systems and community-driven learning processes.

shreyas@livinglabs.institute

I am a transdisciplinary learner, academic, and practitioner-researcher with an affinity to infrastructuring place-based knowledge systems and community-driven learning processes. I am continuously learning and understanding how local knowledge practices evolve and transform across.

My work draws from two decades of experience as a researcher, practitioner, and academic with recently taking on the role of building a place-based organisation. Qualified as an architect with an advanced training in areas related to human settlements, my work is at the intersection of the fields of settlement studies; southern urbanism; critical heritage studies; climate change and adaptation; urban livelihoods; and development studies.

I’m co-creator and director of Living Labs Institute. At the institute I anchor the overall pedagogical vision and its translation into the structuring of the learning year, schools for concentrations, modules, courses, and learning modes.

I am also co-creator and Director of Living Labs Network & Forum and Aruvu Collaboratory, our place-based organisations, to collaborate and learn from communities and institutions in the Dakkhani Region (Hyderabad-Karnataka region), Kundapura, Channapatna and Chennai in India. I share the dream and passion to build institutions/organisations that cares for the place, communities, and its people.

On learning

I believe teaching and learning facilitation creates moments for co-creating knowledge revealing diverse perspectives and lived experiences embedded within a place. We see learning as a process of actively engaging — not just with ideas but revealing rootedness of relationships between people and places. We consistently find grounded ways to facilitate learning to challenge dominant knowledge production practices, making the spaces of place-based knowledge production visible. In current times we need to nurture individuals who recognise such spaces of knowledge and are able to use it to reimagine what development means to a place!

Our approach centres on creating learning environments where learners can engage critically with both grounded practices, theoretical & conceptual frameworks. We facilitate explorations at the intersection of orchestrating from disciplines, learn from knowledge produced in diverse ways and the most crucial to factor in multiple lived realities that co-exist in a place. Through this, learners develop not only conceptual understanding but also learn from practice to engage ethically with communities and places.

We emphasise participatory methods that position learners as co-creators of knowledge. I employ dialogic approaches, field-based immersions, reflective practice, and collaborative projects that carefully considered and relatable with lived reality. I strongly believe in co-designing learning structures that support both individual inquiry and collective sense-making, allowing space for emergent learning pathways shaped by the unique interests and contexts of learners.

Situated Practice

My practice is situated at the confluence of multiple places and embedded knowledge practices. Working across different geographical and cultural contexts has shaped my approach to learning and facilitation. We understand places not merely as locations but as complex web of relationships, histories, and ongoing everyday negotiations.

In Bidar, Channapatna and Kundapura, I position myself as learner, researcher, educator and facilitator, involved in imagining and directing several long-term engagements through collaboration with inhabitants of the place. This helps in grounding long-term engagement with communities, understanding their rhythms, challenges, and aspirations.

I see our practice as inherently collaborative, recognising meaningful engagement with places requires building relationships of trust and reciprocity. Through this approach, I aim to co-create learning environments that embrace the complexity of places and the diverse ways communities make meaning within them at Living Labs Institute.

Courses

  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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
  • Past

    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