Godrej Archives in collaboration with Arthshila Santiniketan invites you to our workshop “Everyday Objects, Ordinary Lives and Unpredictable Stories: Oral History and Material Culture,” a three-day workshop that focuses on oral history, specifically in relation to the machines that signify Indian modernity: the typewriter, the sewing machine, the bicycle, the motorcycle, the radio and the telephone, the refrigerator, and the water filter.

Facilitated by Indira Chowdhury, Public Historian, and Sarita Sundar, Designer and Design Historian, the workshop will equip participants with the skills to conduct and process oral history interviews, curate stories, and create larger narratives using hands-on approaches.

Details:
Dates: 29-31 January 2026
Time: 11 AM to 5 PM
Venue: Arthshila Santiniketan

Open and free for all.

Limited Seats | Registration is mandatory

Click here to register: https://forms.gle/vRV7tUw69JnZNWX18

About the Workshop:

A three-day, in-person workshop by Godrej Archives in collaboration with Arthshila Santiniketan

This workshop, delivered by two long-time collaborators, Indira Chowdhury, Public Historian, and Sarita Sundar, Designer and Design Historian, will offer an opportunity to express your creativity through text and images. It will introduce participants to the fundamentals of oral history and equip them with skills to conduct oral history interviews. Focusing on the collaborative and inter-subjective nature of oral history, participants will learn how the oral history interview offers an entry point from the present into the past negotiating social and political structures that have evolved over time. Taking the exhibition: Keys to the Past – Story of the Typewriter in India as a focal point, the participants will be asked to direct their attention on machines that signified Indian modernity: the typewriter, the sewing machine, the bicycle, the motorcycle, the radio and the telephone, the refrigerator, the water filter. With this focus they will interview their subjects about their use of one or several technologies, relating it to the history of post-Independence India. Participants will be taught how to process their interviews, curate the stories they record and create larger narratives using hands on techniques.

Mentors:
Dr. Indira Chowdhury (Public Historian)
Sarita Sundar (Designer, Design historian and Educator with Hanno)

Date: 29-31 January 2026

Venue: Arthshila Santiniketan
Seats: 15-20,  in person. Ideal for students and enthusiasts of history, graphic arts and storytelling.

Open and free for all.

Limited Seats | Registration is mandatory

Click here to register: https://forms.gle/vRV7tUw69JnZNWX18

• All participants should bring a photograph of any one of the following objects and prepare to share a story about the object: typewriter, sewing machine, bicycle, cycle rickshaw, motorcycle, telephone, water filter. Participants are also asked to identify one person who they could interview for this project.
• All participants should bring a notebook, pen, pencil and their mobile phone along with earphones.