I would have always chosen “Happiness.”
But this hasn't been a typical year.
2020 was tough; I haven’t fully recovered.
The year took all my resources to survive and thrive.
All my ideas, hard work, restraint, enthusiasm, love, sorrow.
My ego, control, balance, discipline and resilience.

I lost my generous mentor, who gave me endless confidence.
I lost my best friend and a big part of my soul at one go.
My home struggled to confine three adults and a feisty teenager.
I watched my students grapple with learning online.
I watched families struggle to pay fees. …

As a society, our collective world view is built by what we see around us. What we see and what we learn influences who we are and how we behave. I have worked for the last twenty years with young people in design and media education and see that both Cinema and Education have the power to challenge and influence social constructs and how they evolve over the years. Independent Cinema makers, the world over are taking the lead. From where does that power come?

Representation

Are there parallels between Cinema and Education? Is representation done consciously or unconsciously, and…

When you look at your business, you want it to grow, innovate, have an impact and be profitable. In today’s VUCA world more than ever, it’s not enough to have a competent team, that has the knowledge, communicates well and works together. One has to have a winning team. A winning team is different from a good team or a strong team. A winning team is the agile one, who can stretch objectives and can accomplish their targets, with a blend of profit and permanence for a better future.

So what are the key triggers that can create an impactful…

There is no clear definition of sustainability. There are many viewpoints on what will help the planet and its inhabitants avoid the depletion of natural resources and keep an ecological balance so that society’s quality of life doesn’t decrease.

Large corporations, governments, and the United Nations have developed goals with a schedule for 2030. As individuals too, we look at consumption, packaging, wastage, and the circularity of the products we use. We measure distances travelled and the number of chemicals used.

This story looks at another viewpoint of sustainability — the life of a product and what makes things last…

A student spends more than 1000 hours in classrooms with teachers every year. This interaction used to be face to face, and for the last year, it has been online. In both cases, teachers deliver similar knowledge, sometimes using the same powerpoints, same notes, and reading material.

Content has very intelligently been transformed into digital or online learning to maintain quality, increase access, and ease delivery. Everything is available online — lectures, reading material, slides, links to other sources etc. In many cases, this has changed the teacher’s role into a content creator, someone who puts knowledge together into consumable…

ESSENTIAL KNOWLEDGE

Dieter Rams, said that Good Design should:
Be innovative,
Make a product useful,
Be aesthetic,
Make a product understandable,
Be unobtrusive,
Be honest,
Be long-lasting,
Be thorough down to the last detail,
Be environmentally friendly, and,
Involve as little Design as possible.

Most people see design as a way to create new, good-looking and better-performing products, artefacts, and clothing. Dieter Rams, too, referred mainly to product innovations. But the meaning of Design has expanded, and what it is related to has shifted and grown. And still, Dieter Rams’ principles stay central and important.

Today Design has taken on a whole…

The Creative Industries: Design, fashion, communication, media and all innovative businesses have been looked at by students and young graduates with great interest. These are careers that promise excitement, purpose, travel, self-fulfilment and money. Working with design and media students for the last twenty years, I have seen gradual changes in the industry and worked to readjust classroom learning accordingly. 2020 has been different. In 2020 we saw radical shifts like never before. Shifts in the way we approach, create and consume design, fashion and media. Disruption and chaos all around.

Many young people ask me: Will the creative industries…

Life, leadership, learning and moving ahead

So much has happened in the year gone by, and we tend to remember it through incidents. There is a part of each of us that wants to communicate through stories, through ideas that transcend real things that happened. Stories illuminate not only what happened, but the impact it had on us, how we experienced the moments of life. Our thoughts are a mirror of our lives and help us catch a glimpse of humanity through our reflection.

I looked at the posts I wrote in 2020 and saw this mirror my experiences. Here are a list and reflection through…