Whose heritage Is It?

Whose Heritage Is It? was a collaborative learning programme co-facilitated by LAND and 100HOWTOs for INHERIT, an initiative by Ashoka University and Helen Hamlyn Foundation, with the Young India Fellows at Ashoka University. Building upon the original course conceptualised by Dr. Shobita Punja, the programme reimagined heritage as a living, relational practice rather than a fixed archive of the past. Anchored in the enduring question, Where do we come from?, It invited participants to examine how histories, memories, landscapes, materials, ecologies, and everyday cultural practices continue to shape contemporary identities and futures.

Across sessions, learners engaged with heritage through research, field observations, dialogue, critical reflection, and encounters with contemporary art and material culture. The programme expanded conventional understandings of heritage beyond monuments and museums, exploring how songs embody memory, food preserves cultural knowledge, objects carry biographies, and local ecologies offer ways of thinking about sustainability and collective care. Rather than positioning heritage as something to be preserved at a distance, the course encouraged participants to recognise themselves as active inheritors and knowledge-makers. By bringing together artistic practice, historical inquiry, ecological thinking, and community engagement, the programme cultivated more attentive, ethical, and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding culture as a living process of relationship, responsibility, and continual becoming.