Udaan - The Urban Park

The project is a story which is weaved with threads of people and community fabric right next to the celebrated heritage site Sarkhej Roza, once used as a retreat by Ahmedabad’s rulers now a tourist spot and shadowing the clustered and compact community around it. This community is full of character with its bustling streets, narrowing down and becoming more clustered as one goes further inside. With distinctive character of Sarkhej Roza as the backdrop of the community being a major part of their culture, a shift in identity from the Roza to the streets of the community is felt. As one walks around this area one can see kids playing all around on the streets scattered in groups playing and inventing games with pebbles on the street and making paper boats from waste paper around. Residents of this area majorly send their children to school, up to a certain age. Whereas there as many who do not go to school or leave school and help in the household work. After taking to them one realizes that they have the desire to go to school and study with other children. Young girls of the community are confined to their houses and after a certain age are involved in the household activities, few go to school and their excitement could be felt while talking to them. Women are seen washing clothes and utensils on the streets outside their houses but when one talks to them their desire to work by using their skill set of embroidery work can be understood. One can see men sitting on chaarpai alongside hookahs and goats of all sizes loitering around the streets with kids playing around, houses in distressed condition with unplastered walls and unfinished doors can be seen. As one gets an insight of the community and its people a strong sense of belonging can be understood but still an aspiration to break free from the reality is evident. I was immensely moved by the condition of the children of the community. The children of the community are not currently channelized in the right direction but have great amount of energy and desire to do more. Hence, I proposed a program which will help guide the children towards a positive direction by working on their life skills through the idea of enhancing their imagination abilities. It is where creativity, ingenuity and thinking outside the box begin for child development. Great opportunities for learning are possible when children participate in creative activities. They learn to express themselves; their pent-up emotions get a direction to come out and further develop behavior and socialization skills. I propose Udaan – The urban park, A space for all, where the major focus will be on enhancement of children by letting them explore their creative abilities and it also provides a space for other members of the community where they can come and relax and feel the openness which is lacking in their current environment. This place further will give an opportunity to the children to reach out to the world beyond their community by giving them the platform of an art park, where tourists coming to Sarkhej Roza can come and see children putting together ideas and can see the art works and sculptures made by the them in the art park space. Udaan will help in bringing together the community as a whole while majorly focusing on development of children through creative methods eventually making them better citizens of the society.