Sahapedia's project helps enthusiasts access, appreciate history better

Increasingly, we have tended to overlook museums as swiftly as the antiquities they store — conflating both as relics. A way out is to take into account heritage that is “living” among us and not limit our senses to merely “seeing”. Sahapedia.org, an open online resource on art and culture, held a series of events around International Museum Day (May 18) in 15 cities, in partnership with social, cultural and not-for-profit organisations, to help enthusiasts appreciate history and art by going beyond exhibits.

Advait Amrit Gundlapati, a fifth-grader, would testify to this after a heritage walk to the National Handicrafts and Handlooms Museum (better known as the Crafts Museum) in the national capital. “We were told how we can learn history from objects like coins, weapons and jewellery. We also learned how the Manganiyars from Rajasthan tell us about their great kings and queens by singing,” he says. His mother, Talish Ray, a lawyer who has been organising heritage walks pro bono for six years, led the walk. That was followed by a workshop on black clay pottery featuring craftsmen from Azamgarh. This was one of the walks she organised with support from Sahapedia, for the second year. “Since we are doing walks with Sahapedia, it is not just about going to a museum or historical place, but more about touch and feel because history has many sources,” she says.

The 24 participants at the May 13 walk were in the age group of seven to 18. Ray recognises the axiom of “facts are sacrosanct, opinions are free”, and adds that Sahapedia is clear about presenting facts and not opinions.

On May 18, as part of its “baithak evenings”, Sahapedia held a workshop in Delhi conducted by Siddhant Shah, an architect and disability access consultant who founded Access for ALL. “We organised the blindfold tactile art workshop to sensitise people towards special needs and disability.” The emphasis was on making people realise that art allows a multi-sensorial experience, even for those lacking the use of one of the senses.

The participants — including those with special needs — were blindfolded and taken around the venue to help decipher paintings through cues such as music and smell. Shah, who has worked with institutions such as Delhi’s National Museum — he was the resource consultant for Anubhav, a tactile gallery for the disabled — visits museums that are part of Sahapedia’s ongoing mapping project and organises walks to make them accessible to all. “The digital format itself provides a form of accessibility, through Sahapedia for instance,” he points out.

After Sahapedia began its mapping project last year, it has charted around 250 museums in 15 cities. Says Vaibhav Chauhan, secretary, Sahapedia, “The idea initially was to inventorise museums in India, as there are widely differing listings.” While it aims to aggregate the museums on a single platform and create an ecosystem for all stakeholders to interact, keeping information dynamic emerged as a challenge. “We thought, why don’t we create a dashboard for museums so that they can manage information themselves rather than us doing it for them.” With growing interest in the project, Sahapedia expects more and more museums to feed information onto the dashboard. The portal also eventually aims to act as a transactional platform to allow booking of tickets, sale and purchase of replicas, etc.

The role of museums as “non-formal educational institutions” has degraded in our society, feels Chauhan. But a likely resurgence of the liberal arts and proactive outreach by museums, coupled with educational programmes for the public at large, would soon reverse the scenario, he hopes.