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Founded | 2018 |
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Purpose | Peacebuilding |
Key people | Sparsh Ahuja, Sam Dalrymple, Saadia Gardezi |
Website | www |
Project Dastaan is a peace-building initiative that reconnects displaced refugees of the 1947 Partition of India that created the modern-day South Asian republics of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh with their childhood communities and villages [1] through bespoke 360-degree digital experiences. [2] Dastaan means 'story' in several languages of the subcontinent. [3]
The project aimed to virtually reconnect 75 first-hand witnesses of the Partition to their ancestral homes by 2022; however, Covid-19 restrictions reduced this target to 30 virtual returns. [4] The Project has 3 features "Child of Empire", an interactive VR piece to be installed in museums, [5] a feature film titled "The Lost Migration" and another film titled "Where the Birds Live". [6]
Founded in 2018 by a group of four students at the University of Oxford, the venture is advised by high-profile historians, film-makers and advocates including Malala Yousafzai, Gabo Arora, [7] Suroosh Alvi, William Dalrymple and Aanchal Malhotra. [8]
Dastaan's founding director, Sparsh Ahuja, was a recipient of the San-Francisco based CatchLight Fellowship in 2018 [9] in order to seed fund the project. The Project was also accepted onto Kaleidoscope VR's DevLab Accelerator in 2020 [10] and is part of the UK-based National Partition Commemoration Project, [11] which launched the 'South Asian Heritage Month' Campaign at British Parliament in 2018. [12] In 2022, co-founder Saadia Gardezi was awarded a National Lottery Project Grant by Arts Council England to fund a multi-venue tour across the UK in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of partition. [13] [14]