Building Well Together

A video exhibition about a social experiment run amongst forest-living Pahari Korwa hunter-gatherer communities in India. 

Biologist and anthropologist Shakti Lamba and her team at the University of Exeter are interested in how humans organise to build and maintain common systems which rely on voluntary community participation. Examples of these systems include shared spaces like parks and forests and shared objects as found in libraries. 

In their study, Shakti and her team offered ten hunter-gatherer villages the materials to build communal wells for water - on the condition that villagers invested their own unpaid labour into building them. 

The research team recorded the building process to see who participated and how much, to study what affects participation in such a community project. 

Join Shakti and her team for an evening exploring the story and science of this anthropological experiment via videos and photos of the experiment as it unfolded. Find out what the project can tell us about our own communities and how building effective common systems might be central to addressing the many environmental challenges facing human societies.

Building well together

Exhibition open: Wednesday 28th September 2022 from 6pm – 9pm FREE ENTRY

Introduction to exhibition by Shakti Lamba and her team at 6:30pm

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