In April 2021, Cristina Bogdan and Mriganka Madhukaillya convened a meeting with close friends and mentors to prepare our library:

Leon Tan and Aparna Sharma weaved with us their ideas about learning and being in the world, and proposed each of them an exercise to test our curiosity towards non-standard learning tools.

We asked Arun Kapur, an innovator of the Indian education system and founder of the inspiring Royal Academy in Bhutan, to guide us in building our school model.

We invited trusted collaborators to share their knowledge with us: Jasmina Al-Qaisi & Ralf Wendt talked to us about radio and sound as coding tools, Søssa Jørgensen & Geir Tore Holm discussed their initiative Sørfinnset skole/ the nord land, a practice-led school in Norway.

We rounded up bright young students and recent graduates from the Design department in IIT Guwahati, all working with the MediaLab founded by Mriganka, to respond to our provocations and further challenge us: Ani Dalal, Deepshikha Pegu, Aman Chandra, Trisha Pawar, Ashish Mathai, Antariksh Tiwari.

We spent 4 intense days together, rehearsing a space and a time that would correspond to the experience inside our library in the forest.


Supported by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) through a Mobility First! grant.