Gamto Gyan | गमतो ज्ञान
Creative Arts Education Programme (PATI X LAND), Community Projects 2025
Gamto Gyaan is a community learning project focused on Rajasthan's vanishing knowledge systems. It emphasises that tradition is dynamic and woven into daily life. By exploring material, language, ecology, and folklore, the project connects various cultural elements at risk of being lost. In four participatory sessions, we engaged with local wisdom in gestures, objects, songs, stories, and crafts, all shared through oral traditions. Gamto Gyaan invites us to notice the small things that carry significant knowledge, like a knot, a word, or a scarecrow. These are living parts of our identity and heritage, reflecting our connection to land and community. Each session serves as a participatory act of remembering, creating an archive of lived culture through shared experiences. Gamto Gyaan provides a reflective space to consider how preservation starts with people.
UPCOMING EVENTS
UPCOMING EVENTS
Session 1: Scarecrow - A Living Tale
26th April, 2025: 10 AM to 1 PM
Venue: Public Arts Trust of India HQ, Jodhpur
Theme: Folklore as Ecological Memory
Medium: Documentation, regional puzzle, object-making.
This session will employ the scarecrow—a well-recognized yet frequently neglected agrarian archetype—as a symbol of ecological intelligence, resilience, and regional identity. Participants will investigate scarecrows' cultural heterogeneity across different regions, elucidating how each is intertwined with climate-related knowledge, material characteristics, and local belief systems. Through an interactive group exercise, they will reinterpret scarecrows as living repositories of narratives, encapsulating the historical memories of land and labor.
Session 2: साँठ गाँठ
28th April, 2025: 10 AM to 1 PM
Venue: Sardar Museum
Theme: Human-Nature connection through everyday practice
Medium: Knot-making, regional mapping, sensory exploration
In this session, knots will be explored as both functional tools and cultural connectors. Participants will learn traditional knotting techniques that will be used in charpais, camel harnesses, and rope-making, all of which are tied to specific regional ecologies. Materials such as khajur, khejri, and moonj grass will be studied not only for their tactile quality but also for what they will reveal about sustainable living. This session will serve as an act of remembering through touch, tension, and tying, demonstrating how knots will carry the wisdom of survival and adaptation.
Session 3: City as a Museum- Tracing Lac in Lakhara Bazaar
4th May, 2025: 6 PM to 8 PM
Venue: Lakhara Bazaar
Theme: Material Heritage and City Memory
Medium: Curatorial walk, process demonstration, artisan interaction, storytelling
This session invites participants to engage with Lakhara Bazaar as a dynamic cultural repository, wherein the streets, shops, and populace encapsulate multifaceted layers of memory, history, and artisanal practice. Participants will investigate the intricacies of this time-honored craft, which embodies a wealth of knowledge spanning ecological practices, socio-economic narratives, and traditional healing modalities. Through interactive demonstrations, dialogues with artisans, and the sharing of personal narratives, this exploration aims to elucidate how this craft sustains cultural heritage—not within the confines of museums, but through the hands of those who perpetuate and innovate upon it.
Session 4: Baata Ri Ladi- Vanishing Language & Memory
11th May, 2025: 10 AM to 1 PM
Venue: Public Arts Trust of India HQ, Jodhpur
Languages embody identity, memory, and culture. In Rajasthan, the Marwadi language thrives through dialects shaped by unique regional and communal influences. The fading lexicons signify the loss of entire frameworks for understanding the world. Participants will explore the fragile resilience of oral traditions through games and symbolic acts of inscription and erasure. We will ask: What knowledge vanishes with lost words, and how can we reclaim this heritage? The session will end with a vibrant Marwadi rap performance by local artists, transforming lost words into a contemporary memory through rhythm and rhyme.
Theme: Language as a Vessel of Knowledge
Medium: Wordplay, movement, erasure & music