A muse called Dharavi

Slumdog Millionaire is just the tip of the iceberg. The romance of poverty in one of Asia's largest and perhaps most vibrant slums, Dharavi, has for long inspired art, films, documentaries and books. But while these provided a slum tour from the vantage of an outsider, various recent cultural initiatives, including a brand new mobile museum, are helping artists from the impoverished address tell their story

SLUMGODS

Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lokmanya Tilak look calmly down from photo frames as a classroom in Dharavi's Sant Kakkaya Municipal School shudders with some intense rap music. The children are dressed in voluminous pants and shirts, some with caps on backwards, some wearing chunky shoes. A few adults are among them, all part of Slumgods, a hip hop collective that began in 2009. The room is one of four that were recently rented out to them for classes, with some help from A R Rahman, director Shekhar Kapur and Universal Music.

An amplifier connected to a shifty switchboard powers the acoustics. While a child of 13 whistles and purrs into a microphone, mimicking the reverberations of machines and broken records, another begins to rap. One by one, the others come to the centre of the room and perform moves B-boying and popping. Everyone applauds eight-year-old B-boy Mohan's unsteady headstand.

Hip hop crews have since sprung up in several parts of the city but Slumgods claims it was the first of its kind. It was an aversion to Danny Boyle's 2008 film title Slumdog Millionaire that inspired the collective's name. The three co-founders of the group, Akash, Sunil and Sagar, would meet at Sion Killa after college to try out dance moves, aided by videos painstakingly downloaded on a box-type computer with slow internet. Local children who watched them would ask to be taught. In the free-of-cost classes which began in 2010, they teach various aspects of hip hop culture - rapping, beatboxing, B-boying and graffiti.

It helps keep the children engaged, says co-founder Sagar. It has, of course, also led to some fame. Filmmaker Kapur is set to follow their work in a documentary, the music for which will be given by Rahman. Then, there are the smaller triumphs. Anil Dhangar, 12, feels like a celebrity when he shows off his skills at school. Although he started as a b-boy three years ago, beatboxing is a new passion that claims two of his hours each afternoon. Ever so often, he will bring eager friends to class. Over the years, the number of crew members has grown from three to 55.

DHARAVI ART ROOM

The 10-year-old Dharavi Art Room began as a simple lesson in making posters and banners, but has turned into something of a documentary exercise. Through lessons in art and photography, founder Himanshu S is allowing local children to document their own surroundings. Their work, including self-portraits and photos of local cats and grandmothers, have found takers in exhibitions such as the Kala Ghoda festival and Focus Photography Festival.

The hours previously whiled away by children in the presence of aggressive elders, who often cursed or yelled at them, are now increasingly spent in the art room. The immediate change in space and company helps. They learn to open up and share more, and work in groups. The children, although still street-smart, have softened, their parents tell Himanshu, an artist who taught in schools and routinely exhibited his works until five years ago. He has since dedicated himself full-time to the initiative, and the number of young aspiring artists in the slum has risen from 20-30 to 250.

It was a gradual growth filled with challenges. After seven years of running in spaces offered by various partner organisations, the initiative has found a room of its own. There are areas demarcated for a library and general activities. Its scope has widened as the group takes children for picnics and exhibitions outside Dharavi, and talks to them about subjects like sex education.

A few kids have started toying with the idea of picking art as a career. For instance, after picking up the skill at the centre some years ago, 12th grade student Suraj has become the sought-after photographer for local weddings and celebrations. As was evident at an exhibition two years ago, the children interact and handle gadgets like the Macbook with confidence.

There are still other challenges. "To parents, computers or English speaking classes seem more profitable. It is difficult to explain that art makes a lot of difference in an invisible manner." The group is now working on launching a publication to systematically record works from the art room.

CHITRAPATANG

During their initial trips for children's workshops in Dharavi, volunteers from Chitrapatang, an art initiative, worried that the colourful art materials might get nicked. But in the three years of working there, not one item was reported lost. "The children are so honest. They always seek permission before touching anything," says the group's founder, Shreeniwas Agawane, who himself grew up in an 80 square feet tenement in the slum.

Agawane and his team take annual art sessions in various schools of Dharavi and look to rope in children for specific art projects. During World Sparrow Day last month, he trained 500 local schoolchildren who helped create a sparrow entirely out of balloons. Each balloon had an origami sparrow attached with a message about saving the tiny bird. Agawane took this opportunity to set up a visit to the nature park for his helpers. For a project last year, 120 children painted stretches of walls in Sion and Dharavi either with Teaching them to imagine cartoon characters... like a school-going monkey.

Chitrapatang has made it a point to work with things that are easily available in Dharavi - paper, scrap leather, or bits of resin. As the children grow up in an environment where each home is attached to a small industrial unit, these materials are often familiar to them. Instead, outcomes from the workshops are included in virtual exhibitions on Facebook.

Agawane faces the same challenge as Dharavi Art Room's Himanshu. "The parents, because they have problems of their own, are often not as attentive to the artistic needs of their children." But he has noted some positive change. "Slowly, younger parents are getting more involved." Apart from Dharavi, Chitrapatang holds sessions in villages along the Konkan coast. Agawane's goal now is to train volunteers so they can teach with love, a must he says for "working with children from broken homes."

DHARAVI MUSEUM

In Mumbai's newest museum, no object is sacred. Soon after its second exhibition, most artefacts were in happy tatters. Art lent itself to entertainment as exhibits - including cricket bats designed from discarded bits of wood and grips made of scrap leather - were given away to local kids for play.

That's how Design Museum Dharavi works. Over a period of two months, the museum has been coaxing local manufacturers to think out of the box. These artists - accustomed to the assembly line approach - are encouraged to come out with inventive designs. For the first exhibition, for instance, artists came up with a clever way of salvaging tea from saucers by adding a spout-like extension to help pour it back into cups. More recently, when Dharavi's tailors, leather craftsmen and screen printers came together, they created a riot of radium gloves, flashy T-shirts and colourful posters for the cricket exhibition.

This "nomadic museum" on wheels was born after Dutch artist Jorge Mañes Rubio visited Dharavi for a project some years ago, as part of which he got a local artisan to make shoes. He was impressed by the quality of work and wondered why artisans were not operating in better circumstances. The fact became apparent that most of them merely executed designs and dealt with middlemen who extracted their pound of flesh. So, Rubio teamed up with art critic Amanda Pinatih, research groups URBZ and other designers to launch the museum that will travel across locations within the slum.

The initiative hopes to present Dharavi as a space where local craftsmen and small businesses can find potential clients. Next up, they want to work with contractors who typically make small repairs and ask them to re-imagine the ideal home while local caterers can expand their culinary expertise.