Dreaming a museum of  innovations and crazy creativity:  where will it happen? Will children be my allies?

After all, there are so many science parks and museum, there are also  technology parks, art and culture museum every where but where is an  innovation museum and that too of innovations and  traditional knowledge of  common people?

Let me share what kind of innovation museum I am thinking about and may be it will make some files move.  Some action will be hopefully triggered.  Our children will get  a chance to be inspired. They might prevail upon their parents and other elders  to change their mindset., and overcome their inertia

Idea is that tens of  thousands of green grassroots innovations and traditional knowledge examples that Honey Bee Network (sristi, gian,  and NIF  and numerous collaborators ) have scouted from over 545 districts need to be visible to our children and others so that they will be inspired to make experiments. They will refuse to live with so many social, economic and technological problems that have remained unsolved for decades or even centuries in some cases. How will it happen?

A program on radio  and Ty every week when we will share new ideas and pose problems to students to come out with solutions to problems all around us. Innovations may become a subject of every day conversation. Let us assume that we get some land and are able to build museum there. When a person will enter, she will give her age, education, professional or occupational background and general likes and dislikes. She will be issued a smart recording and listening device. When she stands in front of an electronic exhibit, her status ( whether a student,  worker, scientist, professional, policy maker, politicians etc., ) will be recognized. Exhibit will re-organize itself according to view category. If there is a policy maker or politician, then only bullet points will be shown; neither detail, nor much text should be there. If a student is there, explanation of how it works in simple language through animation may be shown. Idea is that only that much of content should be shown as a person can easily understand.  Not just that, viewer can also download the audio, text, or video on the hand held device and take home to share with others on cable TV or mobile. All the content will be open source. Very day there will be a real life problem poised and best answer will be given a prize and provided incubation support for making that happen.

There will be real working models or true to scale exhibits besides an experimental kitchen where visitors can try out different kind of recipes involving at least one uncultivated plant  and show case to other visitors.  There will be site where visitors can leave behind inspiring stories, by recording them, or folk music or any other art forms which are getting extinct. Users will design their own future in some places and leave them around for others to comment- an installation blog of a sort.

There will be walls, where folk artists of dahod or Takuwa or other regions can paint their work so that their market can be created.

It will be a creative hub, artistic centre, innovation gallery and an experimental kitchen, all in one….a place managed in a distributed manner, where invention will be talked about, innovations will be gossiped about,  and new forms, features and functions will be added to existing things, so that they can start to think,

Don’t complain that I am dreaming too much, Dr Vikram Sarabhai and Kastur Bhai lalBhai had created so many outstanding institutions, each of one, which continues to be excellent still.  I am suggesting a small footnote to that tradition.  It will happen some day, do u want to join the effort, write back

Anil K Gupta