Connected Communities & Digital Futures

Why a caravan

Babitha George

UnBox is a platform that showcases multi-disciplinary projects and conversations. We have explored multiple formats over the years. And much of UnBox’s evolution has been through conversations and collaborations with friends and partners across the world.

In its previous edition in 2014, the UnBox LABS brought together a diverse bunch of participants to organically form teams and evolve projects together. This year, we wanted to bring together a group of friends and partners (old and new) to spend two weeks together at the beautiful National Institute of Design (NID) campus, in the city of Ahmedabad to seed dialogues and ideas that could be built upon and evolve further in the coming months and years. This change in format was brought upon by the realisation that we want to free the LABS from the restrictions of speci c time and people - to open it up to a slower, more on- going process and to continue inviting people into its fold.

We deliberated for a while about what this edition of the LABS ought to be called. After toying with a number of options, we came upon Caravan. India has had a long history of trade routes and journeys within the sub- continent as well as with the world at large. And caravans have been a big part of this. Ahmedabad in particular, situated in Gujarat, is at convergence of the trade routes over land and sea for several years. The word itself seemed to be brimming with possibilities and well encapsulated the tone in which we wanted to set a safe but challenging space for this edition of the LABS.

As a group together over the two weeks, we shared an open emergent journey, where we kept each other company while also being able to step away at times and venture on our own. The caravan had people staying on over the course of the entire journey and several others joining in at different points, similar to what happens in the caravans of lore.

We built the format of the caravan as a space to take some time off, nascent ideas (or well-thought out ones) with each other and immerse deeply in the context around us.

Like in any caravan, the only ask we had of participants was for them to come with an open heart and an open mind, and together we would make sure it is an adventure! This book is a small mirror to this journey we embarked on together; it has reflections from various participants on what they learnt, and what they seek to take back into their own worlds.