Abstract
Three participatory media projects about love and romance in Delhi. Each used a different form—workshops and personal stories, collaborative films, and fictional telephone conversations—to make young people’s perspectives public.
The premise
Young people encounter strong messages about love: from families, films, advertising, peers, religion and the street. These messages can contradict one another. The project did not begin by defining a correct relationship. It created a structure in which participants could name those influences, examine their effects and make something from their own perspective.
A 2012 workshop with Magic Bus staff, documented in the public archive, used exercises around positive and negative associations with love. The discussion opened into gendered behaviour, body types, power and the gap between private feeling and public permission.
Participation model
Prompt
Use accessible creative exercises to enter a complex subject.
Discuss
Connect personal responses to gender, media and social norms.
Make
Develop fictional or autobiographical stories in participants’ voices.
Publish
Create a public digital archive that keeps different accounts visible.
The projects
01 · Workshops and stories
Delhi Love Videos
Workshop conversations about relationships, gender, bodies, media and power became fictional and first-person stories created in participants’ own voices.
02 · Collaborative films
Rock and Romance
Young adults in peri-urban Delhi developed and performed fictional scenes about love, social boundaries and romantic conflict.
03 · Fictional audio work
Telephone Pyaar
Scripted telephone conversations created with young people from Khirkee explored intimacy, anonymity, class, caste, social transgression and unrequited desire.
Editorial significance
Voice
Participants are makers of meaning, rather than subjects interpreted from outside.
Plurality
The archive holds contradictory experiences together without forcing a single moral.
Process
Discussion and media production reinforce one another; making becomes a form of reflection.
Make space for difficult conversations, then put the camera in new hands.