NEW DELHI:
Ahead of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, Sahapedia, the open access encyclopaedia of Indian culture and heritage, is organising a series of multi-city events for persons with special needs, in partnership with UNESCO.
The United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD), which is observed annually across the world on December 3, will focus on the theme of “empowering persons with disabilities and ensuring inclusiveness and equality”. ‘The main aim of these engagements is to enhance the experience of persons with disabilities, so they are not excluded from involvement with India’s rich heritage,” said Vaibhav Chauhan, Secretary, Sahapedia.
Aligned with Sahapedia’s objective of making Indian heritage equally accessible to all groups of society, Sahapedia will be organising the events in five cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Amritsar and Bhubaneswar. In all of the cities, Sahapedia has collaborated with local partners such as The Maker’s Collaborative (Kolkata), Access for ALL (Mumbai) and the Partition Museum (Amritsar), to execute these activities.
The first event, which was held in Kolkata on November 30, showcased West Bengal’s tradition of BeniPutul or glove puppetry. Conducted by the state’s well-known folk puppeteer BasantaGhorai, the puppetry show was organised for persons with hearing disabilities.
One of the highlights of Sahapedia’s IDPD series is a tactile walk-through and storytelling session at New Delhi’s Crafts Museum, which has a vast repository of over 30,000 artefacts and displays of more than 5,000 objects such as puppets and bronze sculptures. The session, to be held on December 4, will involve examining the museum’s outdoor gallery through tactile exploration with a group of visually challenged women.
At Mumbai’s Anandi Special School, on December 3, a session on folk tales and an art workshop will be held in order to engage children with intellectual disabilities. Other important events include a discussion in Bhubaneswar, on December 2, focusing on “Breaking Barriers: Exploring the Odisha State Museum with the Visually Impaired.”
Sahapedia’s IDPD week will conclude at Amritsar’s Partition Museum on December 8, where persons with mobility impairment will engage with oral histories and narratives of partition survivors. Since last year, Sahapedia has organised and curated over 50 heritage-based events for nearly 2,000 differently-abled persons. These include walking tours, sensory experiences in museums and other spaces that support special needs. The events are conducted in collaboration with expert consultants and organisations that are qualified and equipped to facilitate these programmes.
The user-groups that Sahapedia targets are those of the visually impaired, hearing impaired, wheelchair users, those with intellectual disabilities (learning disability, autism and cerebral palsy), reduced mobility, and slow learners. For the purpose of enhanced heritage experiences, special toolkits are created, which include tactile recreation of culturally relevant topics and Braille books for the visually impaired.
