The
FabLabShow is India’s first Science Theatre in the form of live fun science stage shows that will travel all
across the country. It will be 90 minutes of exciting science based content,
where you see science in action using demos, presentations, videos and
innovative exhibits/structures; many that have never been seen before since all
the content is created using a high level of design and originality.
“The aim is to inspire school children and
teachers to act on science, which means doing the science they learnt at
school,” says Prateek Dhruva, the host/ presenter who is a science geek who
conducts experiments alongside a charming robot called CHYP. The one-upmanship
interactions between Prateek and Chyp make the show even more fun to watch.
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They left an indelible mark at the recently concluded Science
Film Festival of India that was held in Panjim.
“We were fortunate to have been invited to do curtainraiser
shows on three days for the 3rd edition of the Science Film Festival of India
at the 550 seater Inox hall in Panjim. We had to do a lightweight version of
the show since we could not get bigger structures into Inox, but even then all
three shows were a hit, with many people even standing in the aisles,” says said
Deepak Pathania, the creator and director of the FabLabShow, who’s an
experienced Industrial Designer from NID and a compulsive Inventor.
Deepak is also the founder of and creative director of Design
Intervention Pvt Ltd that backs the exhibits/ structures used in FabLabShow and
also of D’Art of Science, which takes care of the science content used in the
show.
Design Intervention, a multi-disciplinary design company, that
has been in the business of creativity for the last 23 year, started developing
Science Content for the iconic TV shows like FAQ on POGO and BrainCafe on ZeeQ
in 2009. Post that, they started producing science/ DIY (Do It Yourself)
content for digital/online brands like Worldoo. Then they decided to start
their own brand in this genre of Fun Science, which led to the creation of
D’Art of Science in July 2014.
Against this backdrop, FabLabShows felt like the next step.
“There are not too many things today for kids to experience in a
public scale outside school. And especially nothing that combines entertainment
with learning and yet creates a wow, talking point,” says Deepak.
“Additionally, the focus of Indian education has been on getting
good grades, which is mostly achieved by rote learning. Thus when it comes to
the application of science at a school level, India is ranked very low in the
world,” says Deepak.
All of this made his team and colleagues think about what they
can do to fill these gaps, and that’s how FabLabShow as a concept, was born a
year ago.
Speaking about the structure of these shows, Prateek explains
that each show will have no less than 12 experiments/ presentations that will
be divided into four quarters of roughly 15 minutes, covering one or two
science principles/topics in each.
“We will show some exciting small experiments to start off and
then progressively scale it up like we did for the TV shows. For example, in a
topic like friction where we start with a simple wooden stick picking up a
bottle of rice by friction, to lifting an adult with 4 bottles, to interleaving
books to facilitate a tug of war, to eventually we will see how many people’s
weight does it take to break the bond of two text books held only by friction
in the their pages. This is just one of the many exciting presentations
planned,” says Prateek.
The team further elaborates on the look of the show ‘SteamPunk’.
“For us content is king, but the appearance is queen, therefore
no less important. We chose the SteamPunk look because it epitomises hands-on
kind of creativity from a retro-futuristic fictional era where wild ideas were
given a chance and made with love. We eventually want totake the show abroad to
show the world that India too can create science based theatrical productions
that are at par with the world standards,” says Deepak.
They
plan to take the shows all over the country and then abroad too, but first, as
they are South Goa based, they plan to officially launch next month at Ravindra
Bhavan Margao and from there on they plan on having monthly science shows
followed by DIY science workshops for students as well as teachers.
