International YCE Paul Drury reveals all from a festival celebrating inter-disciplinary processes and experiences that shape contemporary thought and action: Unbox in Delhi.
© Paul Drury
Action At The Intersection: Unboxing Creativity
(by Paul Drury)
Quoting from our festival programme: 'The Unbox Festival is a response to the emergence of a new subculture: one that straddles the spirit of innovation, is fostered by an enterprising spirit, and invites the engagement of all the senses.' As soon as I investigated this festival I immediately felt I could help contribute to its success. I’ve always thought that in order to be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective, and be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. Unbox appeared to be a great platform for this way of thinking and working – particularly in terms of solving some serious pressing problems in Indian society.
Working as a journalist for several years in the North of England was not the classic way to move to working for Idea Generation – a very cool agency in the heart of London’s swinging Shoreditch. But what I soon learned was the value of bringing a fresh perspective to my work there, with different skills, contacts and outlook demonstrating a unique value for the agency.
This fostering of links between disciplines is at the heart of the Unbox experience – and something I was delighted to play my part in – as the programme states 'it stimulates thought, debate and action.' Anything that’s challenging the regular way we do things is something that really fascinates me, so being asked to apply for this Unbox opportunity was totally thrilling.
© Paul Drury
After a whirlwind application procedure I won the opportunity. With the cold winter looming in my mind, I booked a flight into Goa on January 18th, spending five days around a very chilled-out beach in Palolem. It was great to get slightly acclimatised to India, as this was my first visit to the country. No culture shock moments though really, all the people I met were incredibly warm and friendly; it was great to start spreading the word on our project from Day One.
Our Unbox Fellowship was for Breakthrough, a global human rights organization that uses the power of media, pop culture, and community mobilization to inspire people to take bold action for dignity, equality, and justice. More specifically, we were tasked to work on Breakthrough’s award-winning Bell Bajao campaign. Translated into English, this means ‘Ring The Bell’ and encourages people to interrupt moments of domestic violence, ensuring people have their voice heard. Shockingly, one out of every three women worldwide face violence behind closed doors. The programme urges men and boys to take a stand against this domestic violence, which is particularly prevalent in India.
Of course, with this being a digital activism project, we could work on the campaign remotely. This meant regular emails, Skype conversations and probably a little too much time on Twitter figuring out how best we could make this a success.
I was working with two Fellows, Gaurav and Mansi. Gaurav runs Filmbooth, a short film company and Mansi works for a social-media start up in Delhi. Through our regular conversations and work together remotely, it was immediately clear we had complementary skill sets. I’m pleased to say I learnt a lot from them both, and I hope they learnt one or two things from me too!
© Paul Drury
Along with Breakthrough, we decided our project should be a crowdsourced film, with the Fellows contributing videos and delivering a social media advocacy programme to raise awareness of Bell Bajao. Essentially getting out across India – Goa, Jaipur, Mumbai and Delhi – filming people ringing a bell and importantly getting these people to act as advocates for our film, sharing it with their networks and delivering a broader scope of interest and awareness for Bell Bajao.
Goa was a whirlwind of filming people for our project, working on our digital activism strategy and eating fair few delicious Goan curries (and of course, a few evenings with my feet up in a hammock with some old friends from London).
I actually arrived in Delhi on Wednesday 18th January, just in time for India Republic Day, meaning the city was even busier than usual! For readers who haven’t been, it can seem a slightly chaotic and unnerving city at first. But from Thursday onwards I had regular meetings with my Fellows, which was an amazing opportunity to get an inside track on Delhi. Throughout the Fellowship we had meetings, made films and generally got involved across diverse areas such as Hauz Khas Village, Old Delhi, Kailah Colony, The India Habitat Centre, Defence Colony and many more.
The film came together nicely, with the team working with a talented bunch in our editing suite. Also, I put together a social media audit, suggested three creative campaigns and put forward a few digital insights from the best companies in London for Breakthrough. In fact, Breakthrough were so impressed they offered me a role in London to work with them – very exciting, although we’re not exactly sure how this will manifest itself around my full-time job commitments too.
© Paul Drury
Other highlights from my time in Delhi included working from the Indian Art Fair, meeting lots of international arts-world people, and being interviewed for Radio 4 for a documentary on the tilting balance of power between East and West. And I must say, spending half a day in Old Delhi was an amazing experience, fantastic to make a bit of our film there.
Leading up to the festival, the pressure was obviously on, but we got our edit of the film in on time and Breakthrough were happy with our counsel. There were a few technical hitches on the day around the actual activism itself, but Unbox was such a great festival we decided to really make the most of it.
Two of the workshops were really inspirational. Stalin K’s Occupy Media session equipped us with the vision to work on grass-roots filmmaking and use the power of video to really make a difference; and The Light Surgeons session on New Forms Of Storytelling was totally fascinating, at the interface of sound, light, film & the real world - plenty of ideas and food-for-thought for use in my career.
The UK Fellows were great, the thing that was so special about Unbox was everyone bringing different skills and perspectives to the festival, but all with a clear determination to best use our abilities, learn from others and most importantly make change happen. I’m sure there are several UK fellows I’ll work with again in my career. Not only did the festival develop conversations within this community of clearly engaged and talented people – the conversations will manifest themselves much more widely. Quite honestly, I was totally new to Human Rights (and India), so I learnt a huge amount from the experience. The only drawback was that there wasn’t enough hours in the day. Would’ve loved to do more! Oh well, maybe next year…
Paul Drury was a YCE in 2011, leading two sessions at the New British Film Festival in Moscow. Before the YCE scheme, he spent four years working as a journalist and five years working for Idea Generation – the UK’s largest arts & culture communications consultancy – creating partnership opportunities for the arts and advertising.
