LURU Hangs with… Bachpan Manao @ Makkala Hubba

There are no rules in play.

Since last Friday, the volume of chaos in the city has been turned up with the joyous arrival of BLR Hubba, anchored by UnboxingBLR and supported by the Government of Karnataka. And until the coming Sunday (25 January), the city’s denizens will be bouncing across more than 20 venues and attending over 350 events across 12 sub-festivals, ranging from deep explorations of the city’s history to critically acclaimed performances and cutting-edge visual arts to other bursts of excitement.

For this episode of LURU Hangs with…, we’ve changed it up for a beat and decided to pop into the Makkala Hubba, the children’s festival — a partnership between Bachpan Manao, an initiative of the EkStep Foundation, and BLR Hubba. The motivation behind this sub-festival within BLR Hubba is “to reclaim childhood as a shared public responsibility across Bengaluru city.” We spent an afternoon hanging out at the Freedom Park’s former Hospital Block, which has been transformed into a magical, enchanting world of play for kids.

Wish every day was funday

As we walked through the setup with Bhawna Jaimini, the curator of Makkala Hubba, she invited us to “soak in all the magic and joy.” While 15 installations make up this world of wonder, play, and discovery at Makkala Hubba, Bhawna’s choices were motivated by the prospect of “bringing together practitioners with different pedagogies” and then giving them free rein.

She had clarity about her reasons for selecting the practitioners but didn’t meddle with the final results. “For example, with the Made In Earth Collective,” she says, pointing to the raised sandpit shaded by thatched fronds of indigenous grass, occupied by squealing kids, “I loved their use of natural materials and wanted to bring the feeling of soil into this space so kids could touch, feel, and dive into it,” she explains. In Follow the Butterflies, an installation by Design Beku’s Padmini Ray Murray and artist Sanika Dhakephalkar, Bhawna liked the “inquiry into butterflies of the Ghats, which migrate through the city during the pre-monsoon season.”

For Bhawna, giving freedom to the practitioners has meant the installations are agile in their approach. “With Phytoplankton World: The Unseen Heroes of Marine Life by the Children’s Art Studio, Museum of Goa, smaller kids can simply travel through this magnified underwater world” while “older kids can be told about the functions of these creatures,” she points out.

An infantry of happy faces

Between bustling babies and happy kids running around, in honour of Issue #3 of LURU, themed “The Games We Play,” we talked to some of the designers about their motivations behind the installations and interactive games.

In Build-a-Story, created by Anuj Kale and Shreya Khandekar of Leewardists & BBLOX Design, children are invited to complete a half-done mural that “brings together ideas of a better city,” Anuj explains. Drawing their own interpretations on cardboard boxes, participating children can place their box anywhere in the open spaces of the metal structure, thus changing the story, too. “We leave it to them [kids] to actually finish the installation. And so, it’s only done once all the empty boxes are filled,” he tells us. Their open-ended mural narrative is “inspired by the style of the Where’s Waldo? series,” adds Shreya, “and follows two friends catapulted outside an amusement park in the city who face different issues, like never-ending construction and traffic — but they also enjoy roaming around the city.” By following these two best friends, “we gamify the experience,” says Anuj, and kids can see for themselves what changes can make the city fun for them, too.

Shruti Taneja, the founder of Nivaala, started her “storytelling platform dedicated to preserving family recipes and culinary heritage” because she was frustrated with people treating the food they grew up with as “ghar ka khana.” Through Cook & Keep, a life-size board game, kids can explore “a mix of recipes, ingredients, and utensils from across the four regions of Karnataka — south, north, coastal and Coorg–Malnad,” she explains, pointing to the colourful tiles of the game. It also showcases “indigenous, GI-tagged ingredients and recipes from the state, like Mysore pak, Byadagi chillies, kane rava fry, kachampuli, Dharwad peda,” and more as an invitation for children “to become keepers of Karnataka’s culinary culture, carrying local kitchen wisdom into the future,” she hopes.

Until the coming Sunday, Makkala Hubba invigorates a prison site into a spectacle of liberation and learning. Volunteer to babysit your nephews or nieces, or bring your own brats into this space sparkling with fun, textures, and stories.

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The details: Makkala Hubba runs till 25 January at the Hospital Block, Freedom Park. More information here.

LURU Hangs with... is a monthly Luru Newsletter series which takes you behind the processes and pleasures of the city’s artists.