Chennai’s Sambhavna Museum organizes art and technology exhibitions for people with disabilities

Looking out from the terraced front of the Museum Cafe in the marina, you can see a statue of Avvaiyar, the famous female scholar-poet of Tamil Nadu from the Sangam era.

She is leaning on a stick. His verses resonate rhythmically over the centuries as the waves hit the sand. The stick in her hand may be a symbol of miscellaneous assistance to special visitors, as they are helped into the newly opened Museum of Possibilities by the Commissionerate for the Welfare of the Differently Abled on the Lady Willingdon Institute campus. Those on crutches, mechanized wheelchairs, walkers, or those who have come with family or personal assistants are being escorted to this newly designated location along a sloping red-tiled shield.

Inaugurated by Chief Minister MK Stalin in early June, the museum has a cafe on the first floor above the actual museum, an integral part of its planning. It has been designed collaboratively by people with disabilities or PWDs.

“Good Morning!” Appu says the dwarf man is standing at the entrance of the cafe. Appu is a familiar face in the city thanks to his many years as a greeter at the city’s first Mexican restaurant. “Appu started with us in 1995 at Don Pepe restaurant on Cathedral Road and is still with us,” says M Mahadevan, best known for launching the popular city restaurant, Hot Breads, after which he went on to launch several restaurants, including Writers Cafe. Opened popular city restaurants. , Benjarong, Sera, Marina and more. Mahadevan, with his general flair for innovation, introduced tacos and quesadillas to Chennai, though he is known for making croissants with chicken tikka filling.

Just as Mahadevan has gone from the hottest item on the automated bakery circuit to a compassionate entrepreneur who created the idea of ​​Winners Bakery to empower the underprivileged by teaching them practical skills, Appu is promoted as a parent at the cafe . Mahadevan’s The Winners Bakery concept, created in 2005 with the participation of institutions such as the Chennai Corporation and Rotary in the post-tsunami-era, focuses on imparting business skills to qualified people, teaching them to bake, customizing their products . and set up different bakeries within the community.

An eye-catching graphic on the wall shows a circular banana leaf in the form of a platter, filled with foods from our wonderful culinary heritage, including a portion of fried fish. , And the message: “Diversity makes life complete”, designed by Purushottam. It outlines the vision behind the creation of the museum. It’s not just for the disabled. There are lessons to be learned for architecture students, city planners, senior citizens and public spaces alike, such as toilets and malls.

a reliable assistant

“Live. Work. Play.” Vidya Sagar’s is one of the many mottos framed by Poonam Natarajan, the NGO that has been chosen to manage the project funded by the state government. They have been given 2500 square feet of space, out of which they have managed to create a visually stunning array of wall spaces and cubicles, including disability-friendly toilets, sensory musical instruments adapted for use by PWDs, and perforated chessboards. such as accessories. On each piece as well as the hollowed out squares, so that the visually impaired can feel their way around the board.

Natarajan has returned to Chennai after spending eight very valuable years in New Delhi as the Chairman of the National Trust dealing with four important areas – Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual Disability and Multiple Disabilities. She has brought in trained volunteers as well as people with disabilities from Vidya Sagar to form the core group of people who take you around the many levels of experience that make up the museum.

A view of the museum | photo credit: special arrangement

Walking through this museum is not unlike walking into a supermarket, or a commercial play-station, where objects are designed and selected for the differently-abled. It’s as if Alexa had mutated in Avaiyar and decided to play Snakes and Ladders on a cut board (where the board is completely tactile and the numbers are in braille).

access is important

“We have made mock-ups of disability-friendly bathrooms, kitchens and other spaces,” says Namita Jacob, who runs Chetna Charitable Trust, which works in the visually impaired and hearing impaired. Each room is designed to display accessories for a particular use. “For each of the accessories that are on display, there are placards with QR codes that guide you in either voice or video direction,” says Teresa Antony, Head of Inclusive Design, Chetna Trust.

They hope to soon get an app that will allow PWDs to navigate the area alone. She leads us into the disused backyard that has now become a ‘sensory garden’ of fragrant plants and flowering shrubs that are being grown in garbage cans.

At the Museum of Possibilities, the spirit of inspiration is that of young people looking forward to sharing their special world with images and technology that resonate with hope.