Call For Entries

CONTEXT

Urban settlements are growing at a much faster pace than ever in history. While basic human needs of existence remain the same the new built environment is discreetly changing ways of collective living and social interaction. This has been highlighted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 11 which aims to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. The target of SDG 11 is to provide universal access to safe, inclusive and accessible, green and public spaces, particularly for women and children, older persons and persons with disabilities by 2030. More recently the pandemic has also brought back the focus on the basic need for human interaction and therefore the value of shared social spaces in our lives.

The Festival of Places 2022 endeavours to put the spotlight on 'Making Cities Inclusive' by exploring the relationship of young individuals with public spaces in order to understand, 'The Place of Children in Public Spaces in Indian cities and towns'.

Theme

Indian cities and towns have intriguing multi layered shared social spaces that are experienced in unique ways by each individual. Sometimes embraced, sometimes rejected, yet promising a new experience and possibility every time an individual steps into the space as they go about their daily chores. One very important user group in public spaces are children whose presence is increasingly getting blurred in contemporary public spaces. From the age of a toddler to becoming an adolescent their relationship with their immediate surroundings is constantly changing as they increasingly become independent. The public realm shapes the character and personalities of these young individuals in many ways but the important question is are public spaces in Indian cities and towns sensitive to their needs, are they inclusive? The theme chosen for the Festival of Places 2022 Place Stories 2.0 is ‘Making Cities Inclusive-Exploring Children’s Place in Public Spaces’.

The festival is an excellent opportunity to explore and ideate on how public spaces in our cities and towns can be made more inclusive by being sensitive to the needs of children an extremely vulnerable user group. Participatory planning and design are critical tools to achieving these goals and the festival aims to promote the idea as well as intends to create opportunities for both storytellers and attendees to be part of a participatory ideation process.

What’s your story?

Place Stories woven around the theme ‘Making Cities Inclusive-Exploring Children’s Place in Public Spaces’ are expected to begin by capturing the relationship of young individuals, from the age of a toddler to an adolescent, with public spaces highlighting the finer nuances of bonding as well as the struggles in negotiating public spaces and culminate with realistic and implementable design ideas that can help reclaim the public space through simple, cost effective and sustainable interventions.

The idea is to look at public spaces from the eyes of children, explore hidden dimensions as well as investigate how they interact with places, negotiate and use them. It is important to capture the finer nuances of day to day experience as they go about their lives in cities. Place stories can explore experiences of children across different age groups (7-18 years), gender, economic and cultural backgrounds. Apart from capturing children's experiences as they navigate and explore public spaces, Place Stories will critically examine the problems and opportunities that a place may offer, recommending strategies for mitigating the space's negative aspects and measures to make it more inclusive. Place stories can explore the aspects of identity, mobility, accessibility, safety, comfort, activity and interaction within the public spaces through experiences of children.

fop 2022

Let’s Talk About Places

Place selected for storytelling can be either contemporary or historic, all existing in the public realm. The place can be explored at the scale of the neighbourhood, street, node or the city.

Place stories can be woven around different types of public spaces namely streets, chowks and transit spaces such as sidewalks, cul-de-sacs; commercial spaces such as squares, bazaars, markets; leisure and recreational spaces such as gardens, parks, open spaces and community spaces in heritage precincts associated with landmark buildings, water bodies, waterfronts and water structures such as wells, step wells, tanks, etc. as well as incidental public spaces.

The idea is not to be limited to just well-known places but extend the conversation to those public places that are essential building blocks of cities, give the city its character, are part of daily lives of people and promote wholesome community living. The Storytellers through their narration should explore the multiple facets of the place that give the place its character, identity and meaning.

EVENT OUTLINE

Place Stories 2.0 shall be conducted in two phases. The first phase shall be conducted as online storytelling sessions and the second phase would be an on ground event hosting the best three Place Stories shortlisted from amongst the 12 Place Stories presented during the online storytelling sessions.

For each of the online storytelling sessions apart from the Storyteller there would be a panel of Jury Members, a Place Expert and an Anchor. Each online storytelling session will host 3 Place stories. The Storyteller for each place story would be given 12 minutes for the place story narration followed by 8 minutes of discussion with the jury and 5 minutes of audience interaction coordinated by the Anchor.

The narration and discussion around the three place stories will be followed by a 15 minutes Place Expert talk. Ninety minutes of engaging narration and discussions every Sunday will capture interesting stories around public spaces and will provide the storytellers an opportunity to be a change maker through their Place Story.

The first phase of the Place Stories 2.0 sessions shall be conducted online from 6th November 2022 onwards on four subsequent Sundays. Dates and details for the second phase of Place Stories 2.0 shall be announced later.

INTENT

The Place Stories participants are expected to identify a shared space/public place of their choice, create their own narration around it with the perspective of it being experienced by children, identify issues, challenges and opportunities, create and develop design based, community engagement based and/or any other set of innovative solutions.

Storytelling style of narration shall be used for the presentation of Place Stories to make the narration stimulating and concepts and ideas easily understandable by common people. Participants can draw upon their own personal experiences or illustrate their talk through experiences and narratives of other people.

The idea of Place Stories 2.0 is to stimulate the thought process of the participants to study and analyse places and capture stories that are waiting to be told. Participants would be required to work closely with local stakeholders especially children associated with the place being studied, engaging with them both during the process of understanding the place and validating their observations and analysis as well as in the process of developing design solutions for the place.

Understanding of the place developed by the participants in close interaction with stakeholders as well as the design solutions arrived at need to be woven together deftly in the form of a Place Story that is impactful and instantly connects with the audience.

GUIDELINES FOR Entries

The Place Story and Design Ideation competition entries shall strictly adhere to the following guidelines:

  1. Each participating team can send only 1 entry to festivalofplaces@gmail.com via We Transfer
  2. The theme for Place Stories 2.0 is ‘Making Cities Inclusive: Exploring Children’s Place in Public Spaces’.
  3. Maximum of 4 persons can participate as a team. Participation of multidisciplinary teams would be encouraged. There is no age limit for participation.
  4. The Place Stories 2.0 Storytelling and Design Ideation competition is open to all individuals who register for the competition duly paying the registration fee of INR 500 per person. All members in the team (maximum 4 persons) need to pay the registration fees for the competition. Online registration (as a team) can be completed on the official website: https://pages.razorpay.com/FOP2022registration from 6th August 2022, 15th September, 2022, 6:00PM IST.
  5. Selected Place Stories shall be presented by participants during the online sessions. The time limit for online presentation for each entry would be 12 minutes.
  6. Each entry must accompany the following information:
    • Title of Place Story, Name, Institutional Affiliation, Passport size photographs, Mobile numbers, email IDs and proof of payment of registration fees for each participating team member
    • A 12 minute duration video of the Participants narration of their Place Story and design ideation would be required to be submitted. Video quality should be at least 720p and maximum size 600MB.
    • Powerful and thought provoking good quality photographs, illustrations, sketches, drawings and visual/audio clips can be used in the Place Story video wherever required to reinforce the story. There should be crisp and minimal use of textual material in the video.
    • The Place Story video shall be accompanied by a detailed write up of maximum 2000 words in word file format (.doc) illustrating the central idea of the Place Story, the place narrative and design ideation.
  1. Place Story entries will be judged on the following aspects: alignment with the festival theme, multi-disciplinary understanding of the subject and context, appreciation of issues, challenges and opportunities, involvement of stakeholders through the process of developing the narrative of the story as well as the proposed design based, community engagement based and/or any other set of innovative solutions.
  2. The submitted entry should be an original piece of work undertaken by the participants and not part of any ongoing project.
  3. Copyright for the entry shall remain with the contributors but it would be the responsibility of the participating team members to use copyright free content (images, audio & video) in their entries.
  4. Organizers of the event CATTS reserve the right to use the entry video including textual material, photographs, illustrations, sketches, drawings and visual/audio clips and other materials for publicity such as brochures, promotional videos, etc.
  5. Festival of Places Jury will shortlist the entries for storytelling sessions and 12 Place Stories will be selected for online presentation. All entries will be displayed on the website of Festival of Places and social media handles.
  6. The winner of the 3 best Place Stories from amongst the 12 Place Stories presented online will be announced at a later date post the online storytelling sessions. The 3 winning entries will get an additional opportunity to present their Place Stories in an on ground event. Date to be announced later. CATTS may incubate promising entries.
  7. Last date for submissions is 12:00 pm IST on 6th October, 2022.
  8. Results of the selected Place Stories shall be announced at 12:00 pm IST on 30th October, 2022. Dates for online Place Story sessions will be announced subsequently.
  9. All selected entries will receive a certificate of participation from CATTS.The 3 best Place Stories will be awarded.
Registrations Closed

OUTCOME

CATTS has envisioned the Festival of Places as a people led movement for reviving and re-imagining public spaces at the heart of healthy and vibrant communities. Through the Festival CATTS intends to build a community of people that cares for places and holistic living. We hope to create a strong network of people who are deeply concerned about their cities and towns, about public spaces and neighborhoods, about traffic and transportation, about pollution and migration, about poverty and slums, all challenges that are threatening the very idea of healthy urban living and peaceful coexistence. The festival encourages people to think about sustenance and resilience, about accessibility and mobility, about culture and creativity, about the future of their cities and neighborhoods. In this sense the Festival aspires to go beyond from just being an event to becoming a community movement for reclaiming, reviving and re-imagining public spaces.

The vision of the organizers of the Festival is to carry the momentum forward and precipitate the ideas generated during the festival. The Place Stories and discussions undertaken as part of the festival apart from mobilizing people for places will help create tangible outcomes. All insights on places and their experiences shared during the festival shall be published on the website as a collection of the best Place Stories. The three best Place Stories shall get an opportunity to present their stories to a live audience in an on ground event.

KNOWLEDGE PARTNERS

sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor
sponsor

FESTIVAL DIRECTOR

team member

Urvashi Srivastava

FESTIVAL TEAM

team member

Dr. Manju Baisoya

team member

CHHAVI LAL

team member

VIKAS KANOJIA

team member

NIDHI BATRA