3-day Night School on The Planetary Web of Life by Radha Gopalan
9-11 July, 2020, 7pm
This is an ONLINE EVENT.
The event will be conducted at www.lamakaan.com
If you are feeling bored and exhausted after binge-watching scores of videos and films on YouTube and other OTT platforms, then here’s is an interesting event to indulge in. Lamakaan invites you to its much talked about Night School.
Night School is a concept developed by Lamakaan right from its inception to offer the audience an in-depth understanding of the issues. It has organized several Night schools on Caste in India, Marxist Ideology, Urdu Poetry, Feminism, etc.
Now it brings a 3-day Night School on The Planetary Web of Life facilitated by Dr. Radha Gopalan as part of the Lamakaan’s ECOLOGY IN COVID TIMES Series.
About the Planetary Web of Life Night School:
The Planetary Web of Life by Dr. Radha Gopalan
The modern human appears to be on a constant treadmill of seeking ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’: air pollution, ozone layer depletion, climate change, new and emerging diseases, malnutrition, obesity, food scarcity and so on. Armed with innovation, creativity and technology there is a sense of invincibility as we react, fire-fight and ‘conquer’ one problem only to be confronted with another. Doesn’t it seem like there should be a smarter and more balanced way to live rather than constantly ‘battle’ or ‘fight’ in response to any challenge? Are there discrete ‘solutions’ to these ‘problems’; are these ‘problems’ distinct from one another? For instance, can climate change be categorized as an ecological or a social or an economic problem? What about COVID-19: is it a public health issue, does it have any relationship to the way we produce food? What if we were to think in terms of responses to changing situations rather than ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’? One way to do this might be to view planetary life as a network of interwoven and interlinked relationships, rather like a socio-ecological web. In this 3 – part night school we will collectively explore some of these questions.
Part 1: Web of Life – A Systems View
Part 2: Our Food Web
Part 3: Building Resilience
The three lectures will begin with suggesting a systems framework and move us through a concrete discussion of Food Systems to finally learning from experiences of various communities and societies to see if we can find ways of building resilience in the face of uncertainty.
Radha Gopalan views the world as a web of relationships, that need to be understood and maintained to sustain life on the planet. She believes that this must be at the heart of all our learning. Radha is trained as an Environmental Scientist with a Ph.D. from IIT Bombay.
After close to 20 years as an environmental consultant, Radha decided to pursue her long-standing and abiding passion for education. For over 8 years, she lived at the Rishi Valley
Education Centre, Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh where her focus was to make Sustainability and Natural History learning more practical and meaningful for high school students. She has also been deeply engaged in the concept and practice of food
sovereignty working with small and marginal farmers in the semi-arid region of Rayalseema in Andhra Pradesh. Radha is a Member of the Kudali Intergenerational Learning Centre, Telangana and the Food Sovereignty Alliance, India both of which focus
on using popular education to engender social and ecological justice.
Radha is a senior mentor and course designer with GenWise and works with school children to strengthen the understanding of the interconnectedness of life on Earth. She is a visiting faculty at Azim Premji University (APU), Bengaluru with the School of
Development and a lead faculty on an online course on Sustainability in an Indian Context developed by APU. Radha is on the Editorial Board of the science magazine IWonder, an
APU publication, aimed as a resource for middle and high school teachers.
Radha has been a yoga student, practitioner, and teacher in the tradition of BKS Iyengar
ALL ARE WELCOME!!!
Organizer
Lamakaan
Lamakaan, An Open Cultural & inclusive Space in Hyderabad that promotes and presents the best of arts, literature, theatre, debates, discussions, and dialogue with a commitment to being open and accessible.
