The project for FICA is aimed to a ‘Public Art' that involves one of the Ankur projects reforming an existing park as a community space in the locality of Dakshinpuri. This would look at the process, how the children cultivate and learn about self, friendship, family, school, neighbourhood, community, locality, and city through building up a park.
In times of rapid urbanisation and remodelling of the city the public spaces for common people, particularly children are shrinking. The landscape of the city is changing at a fast pace and we witness the ever expanding constructions of as it gets skyscrapers, corporate offices or shopping malls. Park can be an interface fostering human connectivity and the creation of significant informal local networks that allow people to survive in this strange situation.
Further Public art can express community values, enhance our environment, transform a landscape, heighten our awareness, or question our assumptions.
Dakshinpuri park is a MCD property that was lying abandoned on one corner of the locality. The people of the locality used the park as a bean to store garbage and during the time/ the children play in the dusty ground.
The artist's intention is to expand and invite engagement and thought through the park:
· Provoking a response in the community people while they visit the space
· Awareness that we are all touching one another’s lives through this space
· Thought transformed to illustrate an individual’s impact on the community
The goal of the project is to celebrate the contributions of community and children and emphasize the pivotal and unique role that art plays as an experimental pedagogy in learning, sharing and developing bond in the neighbourhood for a long term.
So, the park would be designed as a space where the processes and expressions may range from the more traditional, yielding conventional objects or events to research based approaches that engender new conceptual frameworks for exploratory dialogue and experimental creation.
