Access and Community Usage –experiences from the Catapult Arts Caravan

Catalysing public participation in civic debates has been a central aspect of the work of the Catapult Arts Caravan since 2004. Using audio-visual technologies and local arts/artists, the continuing theme of the initiative has been to build public articulation and discussion on issues that confront lives and livelihoods, knowledge and concerns in three areas of the rural Indian landscape – jal, jangal, zameen (water,forest, land) . Contributing to and accessing from a community based knowledge base forms a central aspect of the Caravan public knowledge dissemination process.
Lived histories, memory and folk lore, and shared history and practices make up the content of the knowledge collection. While the content is locally released in a public performance – an open air community arts performance with live and recorded video, much like the Jatra folk tradition of eastern India with multimedia – the public event often has initiated a wider use of digital multimedia technologies at the local level.
Still and video cameras, audio recorders and mobile phones are the devices used to record narratives. Collected by local tech savvy youth, videographers and photographers, the Caravan organises periodic workshops with invited digital media professionals and media artists to expand their technological horizons. Among the innovative avenues of local digital use created is a “Museum of Memory” online, that is also available offline in the form of a map-based interactive multimedia disc. Other outputs range from locally made animated folk stories on CD for children, and even mobile phone ‘village-centric’ ringtones that feature a local musician.