About Jinan
I am an activist/educationist working with traditional artisans in various parts of India. I started working with them to address my own De-colonising and De-schooling process.
From 1982 onwards I have been trying to understand the issues like what is freedom? How is education destroying this? What is creativity/Spontaneity? What is the role of culture in shaping ones aesthetics etc?
Ever since I have been travelling and interacting with children, rural and tribal people from various parts of the country-Nagaland, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Tamil nadu, karnataka etc
From 1993 onwards I have been living and working among the Potters of Aruvacode, a tiny village in Malappuram district of Kerala.
It has been an experiment at various levels:
At a personal level, the attempt has been to confront the alienated, colonised, educated mindset that I had acquired in the process of getting ‘educated’. In that sense, these ten years could be said to be an effort at de-colonising, de-schooling and de-intellectualising, aided by the dying wisdom of the artisan community of Aruvacode.
At another level I had to respond to the de-humanising predicament that be-fell the rural artisan community who became the unwitting victims of the modern development process. My initiative therefore has also been an attempt to understand the abilities of the artisan community and to see how confidence and self-respect could be created in them.
For the past 18 years I have been studying the knowledge system of rural/tribal traditional artisans. How knowledge is created, transmitted, what is creativity, notion of waste, attitudes to children etc? I have been spending lot of time with rural tribal children documenting their games/toys they make and their learning process. I have been studying indigenous knowledge system.
Jinan
to learn more please about Jinans work with learning please see www.recognition.org
to learn more about Jinans work with empowerment of young artisans see
www.enableartisan.org
to learn more about the traditional potters of Aruvacode please see www.kumbham.in