There is a photo at the Bangalore Creative Circus of what it used to be. A 20,000 sq ft warehouse of near-nothingness. It feels like a lifeless planet. Just steel and concrete. The warehouse, the photo informs us, was used as a steel factory, as a labour housing facility, and then as a stockyard for tiles.
When you turn around from this photo, the sweeping view of Bangalore Creative Circus strikes you. It now has a community art space, a restaurant, a museum, a garden with space for permaculture, aquaponics, hydroponics, and mushroom cultivation, an art gallery, a soundroom, an artist’s workshop among other things. The transformation is simply stunning. You can see the evidence, in almost every corner of the place, of how creativity can infuse life into things that we usually think are beyond redemption and hence condemn to landfill. The most striking of all is a giant dirty-grey metallic seahorse hung from the ceiling. It is made of discarded AC ducts, some tapes, a non-functional motorbike silencer, and other pieces of scrap. A bunch of random, seemingly useless things assembled into an astonishing piece of art. The seahorse serves as a fitting symbol for the place, which seeks to propagate “a regenerative culture of living.”
Ajay Raghavan and Manisha Vinod watched the National Geographic documentary, Before The Flood, sometime after its release. It had actor Leonardo DiCaprio meeting with scientists, activists and world leaders to discuss the dangers of climate change and possible solutions. Sustainability, which was until then just a topic of interest, became a pressing issue Ajay and Manisha decided to tackle. The couple quit their then jobs – Ajay as an employment lawyer and Manisha as a marketing professional – to find a space for art, science, climate action, and sustainability.
Within a few days of the search, they found the space they were looking for at the Yeshwanthpur Industrial Area, a few kilometres away from Orion Mall. “We didn’t quite expect to get the place so soon,” says Manisha, “Before we had a proper plan in place, we had a place.”
Ajay, Manisha, with the other co-founders started renovating the warehouse towards the end of 2019. Despite losing over a year due to the pandemic, the place was ready by last October. “All thanks to the artists and architects who worked with us,” says Ajay.
Since Bangalore Creative Circus wanted to embody the spirit of sustainability and public participation, the team came up with the idea of running a social media campaign, asking people to give away things they didn’t need. “Bike headlights, old number plates… The idea was to use material that people otherwise think of as scrap to make our interiors. About 90% of what you see inside are made from scrap,” says Ajay. As Manisha puts it, they pieced it together like a jigsaw puzzle. Each object you see there is so wonderfully odd that it fits the place.
The energy waste is minimal too. For instance, rainwater harvesting to a large extent takes care of the place’s water needs. The restaurant, run by chef Nayantara Bagla, gets its greens from the in-house garden. “About 30% of the ingredients are sourced from here,” adds Manisha.
Advocates of sustainable living in Indian cities belong to privileged sections of the society, more often than not. Ajay and Manisha wish to change that with their place. Inclusivity, they say, is on top of their agenda. “Which is why, anyone can access the space for free,” adds Manisha.
“In addition, we try to translate whatever English content we have, at least in Kannada. We did a thrift market here, particularly catering to the sex workers and transgender community by working with an NGO. Then, we held a session for the children of domestic workers belonging to the Domestic Workers Union. Having said that, we have a really long way to go in terms of inclusivity. We want to engage with people of all backgrounds. It shouldn’t be limited to a bunch of people lest we become an echo chamber.”
The place, its delightful smorgasbord of scrap-derived decors, and, more importantly, its name make it more welcoming. Asked how they came up with the name, Ajay replies, “The interest was always Bangalore, which explains the first part of the name. ‘Creative’ because that is the approach we wanted to take to tackle the problems of the city. And, ‘Circus’ because we wanted it to be a place for mavericks and out-of-the-box thinkers who wanted to solve these problems.”
