Project Dastaan is a
peace-building initiative that reconnects displaced
refugee
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution. s of the 1947
Partition
Partition may refer to:
Computing Hardware
* Disk partitioning, the division of a hard disk drive
* Memory partition, a subdivision of a computer's memory, usually for use by a single job
Software
* Partition (database), the division of a ...
of
India,
Pakistan and
Bangladesh with their childhood communities and villages through bespoke 360-degree digital experiences. Dastaan means 'story' in several South Asian languages.
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. The Project has 3 features "Child of Empire", an interactive VR piece to be installed in museums, a feature film titled "The Lost Migration" and another film titled "Where the Birds Live".
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,
Suroosh Alvi,
William Dalrymple William Dalrymple may refer to:
* William Dalrymple (1678–1744), Scottish Member of Parliament
* William Dalrymple (moderator) (1723–1814), Scottish minister and religious writer
* William Dalrymple (British Army officer) (1736–1807), Scott ...
and
Aanchal Malhotra.
Dastaan's Founding Director, Sparsh Ahuja, was a recipient of the San-Francisco based CatchLight Fellowship in 2018 in order to seed fund the project. The Project was also accepted onto Kaleidoscope VR's DevLab Accelerator in 2020 and is part of the UK-based National Partition Commemoration Project, which launched the 'South Asian Heritage Month' Campaign at British Parliament in 2018.
References
External links
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{{Authority control
Organizations established in 2018
Peace organizations