Waste Work - the book and some events

In case anyone hasn't noticed, we have a new and what we think is a pretty substantial book out exploring many different aspects of Dharavi's waste economy, arts - based methods, and the enormous set of issues and difficulties faced by the people who inhabit that space. The book touches on lots of contemporary themes - rampant urban inequalities, climate crisis, climate justice and ecological breakdown, the wicked problem of plastic waste, labour politics, human rights and also how to (creatively) do research in collaborative ways with very marginalised communities that is not tokenistic, extractive or otherwise ethically suspect. I'll write more about this in another blogpost but in the meantime here are two presentations that explain what we have been up to a bit more - the first is a little video report from our Plastik ka Mela event at the Maharastra Nature Park in April 2023, and the second is a presentation that Ben Parry and I gave for a symposium organised by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art at V&A Dundee in January 2023.