3. The Pol Project: Ahmedabad, India (2010)
A four week long residency project The Pol Project (the pilot of a proposed 3 year scheme which aims to combine the knowledge of UK and Indian craftspeople and researchers in order to engage with a communal urban space) at Arts Reverie in Dahl ni Pol, a Jain community in the heart of the old city of Ahmedabad, India, in October 2010 undertaken together with visual anthropologist and filmmaker Amanda Ravetz.
Amanda and I developed a close collaboration, running workshops and exploring everyday rituals within the Pol through conversation with the community, photography, film and ceramic. A day long event engaged community members in performing daily rituals around a doorway prop was documented through film and still photography, from which a series of silhouettes were developed on ceramic everyday forms, capturing the essence of this community within the Pol. As well as exhibiting the physical artefacts made in ceramic and film in Ahmedabad (The Pol Project Exhibition at Arts Reverie, Dhal Ni Pol, as part of Ahmedabad International Arts Festival, Ahmedabad, India 2010) and Manchester (Craft Objects of Exchange exhibition at Manchester Craft & Design Centre, Manchester as part of Asia Triennial Manchester 2011), Amanda and I subsequently wrote a conference paper Collaboration, Creativity & Value (Pairings Conference, Manchester 2011), and later a book chapter Craft Knowledge and the craft of human life: a South Asian residency (in Felcey, Helen; Kettle, Alice; Ravetz, Amanda (eds.) Collaboration through Craft, 17, Bloomsbury, UK) reflecting on both the collaboration between ourselves, but also our collaboration with the community itself, the tensions and successes, and the impact on all involved. This work draws on the work of Leach on dispersed creativity to help us question the values applied to the varying outputs from projects such as this in the academic world, as well as exploring the notion of revealing creativity rather than creating it.
www.thepolproject.blogspot.com
https://vimeo.com/user5071557
Expanded Craft, Dispersed Creativity: A South Asian Residency
Co-authored book chapter, Residency, Writing, International, India, Collaboration, 2010, 2012
This book chapter reflects on a four week long residency project The Pol Project (the pilot of a proposed 3 year scheme which aims to combine the knowledge of UK and Indian craftspeople and researchers in order to engage with a communal urban space) at Arts Reverie in Dahl ni Pol, a Jain community in the heart of the old city of Ahmedabad, India, in October 2010 undertaken together with visual anthropologist and filmmaker Amanda Ravetz.
http://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/profile/akettle/projectdetails/612