Have you visited a museum, gallery, heritage site and monument anywhere in the world and enjoyed your experience? Have you wondered how those on wheelchairs or with any difficulties access these spaces? Have you wanted to share your joy with those got left behind?
Keeping these thoughts in our minds, 'The Museum Memories Project'* introduced the vertical 'Jadughar Journeys' in 2023 where the museum and heritage space experience would reach those who are unable to access these spaces. The attempt is to help people transform their own space into something accessible, inclusive, intellectual, emotional and magical. Last year we formed a panel of Jadughar Experts for our project.
Why the term ‘Jadughar’?
We are inspired from knowing that museums in most parts of India were called a ‘Jadughar’ or ‘Ajaibghar’ meaning a physical space of magic; our project attempts to transform the Museum into an accessible and inclusive digital, intellectual, emotional, and magical space – transcending geographical boundaries for creative and safe global community engagement.
Our Experts
Amrita Gupta
Art Historian, Curator
Co-Director, CASP
A Fellow at the CAA-GETTY International Program, Amrita is also a researcher, writer and editor over 20 years. In 2019, she co-founded the Partition Studies Quarterly (PSQ), which focuses on partition narratives of Northeast India.
Chirodeep Chaudhuri
Photographer & Author
Known as “a chronicler of Bombay”, Chirodeep is also a visualiser, photojournalist, author, curator, educator and jury member of international photography contests. His work is part of both national and international museum collections. One of his books is ‘A Village In Bengal: Photographs and an Essay’
Ekta Bhyan
Athlete
Employment Officer, Haryana
A Tokyo Paralympian and an Asian Para Games gold medallist, Ekta has been awarded by Haryana government and ESPN. She advocates the rights of the disabled community in India that stresses in creation of an accessible and inclusive society.
Suyash Srivastava
Textile & Apparel Designer
A storyteller who documents from the grassroot level, Suyash has designed a unique system for women artisans of rural Bihar as well as supported awareness programmes for the Queer community of Lucknow and Delhi, especially during the Covid 19 lockdown.
Stephen Barker
Heritage Advisor & Author
Over 30 years, Stephen has created archives and designed exhibitions for UK museums. He is an Arts Council Museum Mentor and curates tours of World War sites in UK. He is Trustee, Bucks Military Museum Trust.His latest book is 'The Flying Sikh: Hardit Singh Malik'.
Projects
#01
Curriculum Design for Shreyas Foundation
Shreyas Foundation, Ahmedabad, wanted the Museums at Shreyas to be used as a Learning and Resource Lab and requested us to design a heritage curriculum for their School. The vertical ‘Jadughar Journeys’ was conceived as a new extension of ‘The Museum Memories Project’ to work with the education sector.
#02
Visit to Sarkhej and Vishala Museum
‘Jadughar Journey’ - curation of stories of magical Ahmedabad for a disabled audience - is conceived as a cultural heritage project to discover and shares stories of Ahmedabad, from past to its present. As part of this we took the students of Prabhad Education Foundation to Sarkhej Rauza and Vishala Utensil Museum.
#03
Summer course at CEPT, Ahmedabad
In continuation of ‘Jadughar Journey’ - curation of stories of magical Ahmedabad for a disabled audience, a 2 week summer course was conducted at CEPT University, Ahmedabad, in June 2024. The students were from Architecture, Design and Planning departments of CEPT.