Achieving Sustainable Development with Art and Culture in West Bengal, India

Description

People Are Culture’s curriculum brings to life the subjects of Geography, History, Social Studies, and World Cultures with engaging, thought-provoking, and inspiring stories of real people around the world. Our interviews and feature profiles reveal the meaning and relevance of traditions and customs, and demonstrate the real-life impact of historical events and social change. Students can see life through the eyes of real people around the world with lessons that are authoritative, first-person accounts of people describing their own cultures.

People Are Culture’s content aligns with all ten of the National Social Studies standards.

NO AI is used in creating our material. Each interview and article was made in collaboration with the individuals featured, who reviewed and approved the piece prior to publication.

Included in this People Are Culture Reading & Reflection Assignment Module are three elements:

• General Overview of Indigenous Peoples & Globalization
• 18-page PDF interview with Banglanatak.com founder Amitava Bhattacharya
• Reflection Assignment | Takeaways from Achieving Sustainable Development with Art and Culture in West Bengal

Each lesson is likely to take a student three hours to do the readings and complete the comprehension/reflection exercises.

In this interview with Amitava Bhattacharya about Banglanatak.com and sustainable development, you will learn about culture-based approaches to lessening poverty, including:

• An overview of how UNESCO’s 1980s vision of cultural and human resources as drivers of sustainable development inspired the creation of Banglanatak.com’s “Art for Life” (AFL) Program, which identifies rural India’s “immense wealth of cultural and creative skills” as a means to alleviate poverty
• A look back at the quality of the indigenous people’s lives, prior to their participation in
  Banglanatak’s services
• An inside look at how Banglanatak promotes Indigenous culture through adhering to UNESCO’s sustainable development goals, empowering local women, and creating a resilient workforce culture
• A description of the three fundamental components of community-based creative economies: skill development under traditional masters with capacity-building in business and design, organizing artists into collective institutions with IP protections like Geographical Indications to strengthen identity and negotiation power, and creating sustainable livelihoods through Folk Art Centers, community museums, and direct market connections that reduce unsafe migration
• The success of AFL’s model over 25 years of working with 30,000 rural artists across 2,600 villages in 4 Indian states, contributing to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and prospering during the COVID-19 pandemic
• Examples of how community-led cultural tourism positions rural artist communities as the “nucleus” of local industries, rather than marginalizing rural youth with temporary labor

Expected Learning Outcome:

This lesson includes clear expected learning outcomes that support students in understanding cultural identity through first-person perspectives, while building intercultural awareness and connections between individual experience and global traditions.

• Students will identify and describe key cultural practices and beliefs from the lesson’s focus community (i.e., Indian culture).
• Students will articulate insights into their own cultural identities and how those identities relate to what they learned.
• Students will analyze how cultural expressions (like art, textiles, and handicrafts) reflect values, history, and social traditions.
• Students will compare perspectives across cultures while finding similarities and differences through human themes.
• Students will make connections between cultural traditions and broader global contexts (globalization, sustainability, cultural preservation), showing critical thinking about identity and intercultural understanding.