Youth-led creative learning practices amongst indigenous communities in India

The proposed talk presents insights from CHIRAG – a project on sustainable food systems amongst indigenous communities in India – worst affected by hunger and malnutrition. Focusing on experiences from the Santhal Parganas region of Bihar and Jharkhand, the panel reflects on two key elements of the community-based creative learning and participatory design approaches it has adopted, namely, participatory film-making and virtual platforms.
We discuss how youth from the community have ‘taken hold’ of these technologies and adapted them to meet their needs, in this case, running educational programmes for younger children in the context of covid-19-induced school closures, or supporting stranded migrant workers, moving beyond food and nutrition literacy.
The talk concludes with some learnings in terms of creating pedagogic spaces within the community setting, and challenges of taking an iterative approach to learning.