Page 42 - HERE AND NOW Dec 2022

Connection, Co-creation, and Celebration!

Behind the scenes planning for ISABS Golden Jubilee 2022

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The Golden Jubilee (GJ) group to design and execute the 50 anniversary celebrations was set up
by Joy, our President, early in 2021. Raji, Ruchi and Joy were the members. I joined this group
much later in the year. Payal and Sunita joined towards the beginning of 2022.

When individuals or institutions celebrate a milestone, they tend to approach them at two levels
– action level and reflection level. Action in celebration is a spontaneous joyful expression of the
gathering. Behaviorally, one would witness activities, fun, games, music, dance, cake-cutting and
so on. In contrast, reflection is a process of bringing back memories of the past, distilling the
learning from the journey and contemplating the future. Behaviorally, one would witness
storytelling, honoring the contributions of members and envisioning the future as a community.

It was clear to our group that we needed a blend of both action and reflection in our design. But
implementing such a design, especially in a diverse community like ISABS, was not an easy task.
Some of our colleagues can break into a song or dance at the drop of a hat and some would like
serious introspection as a community on our contributions and failures as a society. The challenge
was to honor and blend both these processes.

The post-pandemic scenario in the country posed an additional challenge. ISABS hadn’t met as
a community for the past two years since no in-person events were held during the Covid
pandemic. Many of us were looking forward to meeting friends and colleagues in person and
hence the need for interpersonal connection was high.

The challenge was to design a two-day event that honored and enabled all the three processes -
connection, reflection, and action. We made these the three themes for our design – Connection,
Co-creation, and Celebration!

Creating the themes was the easier part of the job! Converting these themes to a workable
design, keeping in mind the venue, the number of people coming in, our culture of music, poetry
and movement, the weather in Goa and our own inclinations was the tougher part. Long
processes of dialogue, critiquing, conflicts, feedback, and our own reflections helped the design
to emerge from these themes. In retrospect, I must admit that our own microcosmic processes
of connection, co-creation and celebrations helped us to imagine the larger macrocosm of the GJ
event.

We divided the tasks amongst us where Ruchi and Raji focused on the connection and celebration
dimensions – the session on writing, poetry and drumming and the party. Payal and I took up the
design of sessions on co-creation, while Joy focused on the formal session along with all the gifts
to be given, people to be honored, etc. Sunita took responsibility for communication. In addition

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