Exhibition-in-a-Box: By Young Adults, For Young Adults
A portable, table-top version of interdisciplinary exhibitions by artists and scholars traveling beyond outside the Gallery across schools, libraries, and community spaces
Exhibition in a Box, Calorie
Exhibition in a Box, Calorie
Exhibition in a Box, Calorie
Exhibition in a Box, Psyche
Exhibition in a Box, Psyche
Exhibition in a Box, Psyche
Exhibition in a Box, Sci560
Initiator(s)
Science Gallery Bengaluru Team
Description
Science Gallery Bengaluru (SGB) is a free, interdisciplinary public institution that bridges science and culture through exhibitions, experiments, and participatory programmes, aiming to democratise access to knowledge. One such initiative is EIAB (Exhibition-in-a-Box), conceptualised by design intern Ananthu Suresh in 2022. Designed as a portable extension of SGB’s exhibitions, each EIAB translates an exhibition-season into a self-guided learning experience using low-cost, DIY-components, textual and video materials, and prompt-based activities that encourage young learners to build, question, and interpret scientific ideas.
Countering top-down, urban-centric models of education, EIAB redirects institutional infrastructures toward grassroots knowledge-sharing across rural public libraries, classrooms, and community spaces. Bridging the digital and physical, the urban and rural, and experts and learners, it empowers each user to become a curator of their own inquiry. Bilingual in English and Kannada, EIAB makes knowledge more accessible and locally grounded.
Goals
EIAB aims to: Translate SGB’s exhibitions into art-led learning tools; Democratise interdisciplinary knowledge by lowering spatial, institutional, and pedagogical barriers; Re-evaluate how institutions reach people, redirecting rural libraries and schools into spaces of interdisciplinary inquiry; Sustains each exhibition-season’s relevance through a convivial, solidary exchange of knowledge, by blending physical and digital formats, and being bilingual; Operate on a 1:1 model, bringing young adults and educators as both initiators and users.
An MoU with the Government of Karnataka extends this to roughly 6000 libraries and 5500 schools.
Beneficial outcomes
EIAB fosters art-led non-evaluative learning, interdisciplinary curiosity and collaboration, and helps imagine the exhibition themes as a tactile, visual, and dialogic experience, going back to the etymology of aesthetics: to feel and perceive; thereby, interpreting the theme(s) as an exhibition they can DIY. EIAB’s bilingual, reusable design sustains SGB’s exhibitions well beyond their season at the Gallery. By replacing assessment-driven instruction with open-ended, interdisciplinary inquiry, EIAB builds young people's capacity to comprehend uncertainty and navigate complexity—equipping them to engage critically with whatever global challenges their exhibition-season takes up next.
Location
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
Users
Schools, public libraries, teachers, librarians, and informal educators through Science Gallery Bengaluru’s Student Learning Sessions and other outreach programmes. Young adults between the ages 15 and 30; and pilot deployments reported for ages 12–30.
Maintained by
Science Gallery Bengaluru, through its Experimentor Programmes (as part of their Mentorship Initiatives)
Duration
2022 - ongoing
Category
Scientific
Pedagogical
Politics
Urban Development
Economy
Environment
Social
