Jugaad: frugal innovation

Hannah Kemp-Welch & Sophie Hope talk with Kim Wide & Anurupa Roy about jugaad, and the role of frugal innovation in cultural practice.


Episode 03     November 22, 2024
Contributors    Sophie Hope     |   Hannah Kemp-Welch     |   Anurupa Roy     |   Kim Wide    

As part of the fifth edition of Social Making: “the UK’s only biennial symposium dedicated to socially engaged art practice, co-creation, and place-making” Kim Wide and Anurupa Roy led a workshop exploring the implications of jugaad.

Kim Wide works as the founder and director of Take A Part in Plymouth, UK. Anurupa Roy works as an award-winning puppet designer and director of puppet-based theatre in Delhi, India.

The BBC has described jugaad as “an untranslatable word for winging it”. The word exists in Hindu, Urdu and Punjabi and describes using whatever you have to hand to make something you need; a process of frugal improvisation.

In this episode Sophie Hope and Hannah Kemp-Welch talk to Kim and Anurupa about their workshop; and about the nature of jugaad, as a global practice of subversion by radical practice,; the collective politics that fuel jugaad; and what it might actually mean in an English, or European, context.

Note:

Social Making iteration 5 took place on October 10 and 11, with support from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.