Since June 2004, the “Catapult Arts Caravan” initiative in North East and Central India has catalysed public participation in civic debate by using the arts to articulate issues and ideas of common interest. It builds public participation by evoking the idea of Amartya Sen’s  ‘Argumentative Indian’ – who loves to speak in public, and is seduced to do so by the creation of little spectacles based on the local surroundings. The Caravan is therefore an effort to create a sustainable space for a community to:
a) Represent itself to itself,
b) Represent itself to others outside of that community, and
c) Provoke discussion about the conditions and realities of that community among the plurality of local participants, and make easily accessible their concerns and understandings using the new digital networks.

Using new digital media technologies – audio, video and the internet, the Catapult Arts Caravan is an attempt to create the possibility for locally grounded and interactive media that remains linked to national and global discussions. The project can contribute to and become a model for civic internet use (around the world), demonstrating both the technological infrastructure and social partnerships needed for success.

Public involvement in articulation of local concerns in the Catapult Arts Caravan performances has led to a revival of interest in collecting local memories, histories and testimonies. Activities like village to village data collection, prompting the articulation of local memory, testimony and history, when discussed and debated, become a primary source of information on the different strategies and tactics people use to negotiate contemporary challenges.

Why do we need something like the Catapult Arts Caravan

Contemporary local history provides a vital link for understanding the relation between immediate experience and the metamorphosis of the world at large. In an era of encompassing forces and global sensibilities, reconnecting with local history has the power to give a boost to the individual, the concrete, and the particular (Rethinking Home - Joseph A. Amato). This offers fresh perspectives, themes, and approaches for energizing local history at a time when the very notion of place is in jeopardy.

However, local history studies and documentation are a weak link in the Indian sub-continent, where instead re-writing of history from particular perspectives is gaining ground. Well known historian Romila Thapar recently remarked, ‘… Many of us who belong to the secular tradition don't really have a feel for local history. It is very important that one goes into the question of local history and does it intelligently and says that you know this, this and this is possible but this is definitely not possible. So one has to force oneself to take an interest in local culture and local history. I believe the RSS (the Hindu right wing) is engaged in a massive project of going into local history. I think in the next ten years, they plan to go into each district, each local area, and produce their versions of local history. It is therefore necessary that secular historians and groups also take serious interest in understanding local history…’

an inspiration for the caravan - the traditional jatra - all night long community cultural event that existed in different forms around India

Future possibilities with the Caravan

New internet and media technologies allow simultaneous explorations of performance and public discussions in more than one location. This allows participants to discover their interrelations, and makes possible creative navigation of the terrain humans live. The Performance offers the possibility, even if briefly, to merge individual life-worlds through sensorial (audio visual) experiences, and so stimulate feedback, promote debate, and generate shared knowledge in visible and “tangible” formats. Its foreseeable impacts include…

1. One such impact is that groups will be able to record their own stories. For economically and socially marginalized communities to have the opportunity to recount and preserve their histories is a basic way of raising their self-esteem and is a fundamental part of the conquest of citizenship. While it is important to discover channels through which the members of these communities engage with digital technology, it is equally essential to find creative ways to incorporate new media in a consolidated process of oral transmission of values. It may be that the most important factor of the digitization project is not the creation of the "digital collection" as such, but the process that creates an opportunity for new generations to be exposed to traditional stories and local memories. In an interactive / modern form

2. Creating a digital archive of a group's culture provides the opportunity for research and a new awareness of the world. Beyond allowing for a more democratic perspective of history, the formation of this kind of digital collection can serve as a reference for development policies for, and interaction with, communities.This is because the collected narratives represent values and expectations of communities or individuals who do not normally have a "voice" in mainstream  metropolitan mindset society. Experiences from Africa and south America show how important oral memory can be as a way of hearing and understanding the values of individuals and groups.

3. Another impact involves social and digital inclusion. To merely digitize the artefacts and historical narratives of communities does not guarantee social inclusion. On the other hand, to simply distribute computers among communities does not guarantee digital inclusion. “It is necessary to first make computers and their use meaningful to the people who will be using the computers. Communities need to be engaged in the digitization of their own stories as a means of social affirmation. It is also critical that communities feel the "need" and/or have the will to publicize and integrate their cultures…” (Karen Worcman, Museum of the Person, Brazil)