About
A concept for an interactive dance-based game, using the Kinect sensor to teach the English alphabet to school children from the Siddi community in India. This in turn would help them develop a strong foundation and thus help them attend higher education, where the primary medium of instruction is English.
Design of a screen from the conceptual game
Logo inspired from the Damami (Siddi Drum), and interface inspired from "Just Dance", a simplistic interface for the English Dhamal game concept.
Summary
This project was mainly driven by secondary research. I tried contacting members of the Siddi Community via Facebook and LinkedIn but did not get a response. I however succeeded in having a phone-based interview with Mr. Bosco Kaweesi, the President of the Siddi Education Welfare Society and this was very insightful. Following this, I ideated and mapped the pros and cons of my ideas. Finally, I created the final concept by demonstrating the proposed dance, in folk attire of the Siddis. This was done with the utmost respect towards the community. Finally, I created a screen of the final game concept using Photoshop.
Process
Secondary Research
The Siddi Tribe, also called the Sheedi, or Habshi are an Indian-African community residing in India and few places in Pakistan. Siddi comes from the word Syed, which means “Sahib” in Arabic and “Sir” in English.
Photo source : Flickr
Historical Background
The Siddis are descendants of the Bantu people of South East Africa. There is no exact record of how Siddis came to India, but, there are a few stories with varied backgrounds.
1. The Siddi’s came in the 16th century, along with the Britishers, as slaves. They weren’t brought in groups, but, were brought as individuals and thus, there is little known as to how their family life started.
2. The Siddi’s came in between the 16th and the 19th century to the states of Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Andhra Pradesh as slaves by Portuguese merchants.
3. They came along with the Arabs as soldiers and bodyguards in the 15th-16th century. In Hyderabad, they came as the African Cavalry for Nizam Mahbub Ali Khan.
4. The Siddi community came to India in the 7th century on their own, for trade, and stayed back.
The few records that are present show history of ill treatment and oppression of the slaves. Thus, they escaped to the dense forests near Uttara Kannada District and resided there for centuries.
Today there are almost 50,000 Siddi people in India, with 35,000 in the Northern part of the state of Karnataka itself.
In Karnataka they reside in small villages in Yellapur, Haliyal, Ankola, Joida, Mundgod and Sirsi taluks of Uttara Kannada and in Khanapur of Belgaum and Kalghatgi of Dharwad district.
The Siddi people currently speak fluent Kannada and Konkani and few of them even know Marathi and English as well. As they study in government schools, they are forced to learn Kannada and don’t always get the liberty to learn English.
They live a very simple lifestyle as villagers and are self-sustaining as a community who have farms, backyard gardens and rely on the forest for their sustenance. They like living in the forests and would rather stay there as compared to in the city as they get discriminated against and looked down upon. They have an inferiority complex when asked to think in terms of a larger society.
Photo by : Kiran Bakale
Apart from the overarching problem of poverty, the Siddis face a lot of problems in the fields of education, healthcare, forest resources, social and cultural issues, etc.
The government claims to provide them with aid, but, the requirements to even apply for that aid is something that they lack.
Drawing from my research, I concluded that being illiterate in the English language is preventing them from grabbing the closest opportunities to rise up in the pluralistic society.
Thus, I wanted to propose an idea where they began to be recognized as our own. I also wanted to look into how their culture could be preserved while at the same time, they gained more access to knowledge of the outside world.
A special mention to Mr. Bosco Kaweesi, the President of the Siddi Education Welfare Society, Gadgera, who agreed to a telephonic interview which gave me a lot of insights during my research. The interview transcript is included in the research notes.
For my entire research notes, please find them here -
Ideation
Since song and dance is embedded into their culture for centuries, I proposed the concept of a motion sensor (kinect)-based video game to teach the Siddi students in primary school, and secondary school the English Alphabet via song and dance by using their bodies to create positions which depict the English letters.
3D models of the body positions that could depict the shape of the English alphabets were created. There were a few such examples online, but it had two people involved to create a single letter in some, and in some examples the body positions were impossible and made only as an artistic representation.
Thus, I created practical, easy body positions with no complex poses to portray the Alphabet.
I then found a beat that was very similar to the beat of the Siddi Damami (a kind of drum used by Siddis) and I decided I will use that as a soundtrack for my prototype -https://youtu.be/zE7SLnCN9cI
Thus, I have created a “Just Dance” inspired, dance and movement based game concept, for the Siddi children, called English Dhamal.
To visualize the game concept, I took inspiration from the Dhamal dance of the Siddis and took costume inspiration from their dance attire as well
Inspiration for the Dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFBTFXNPmp0 - Karnataka Damami dance 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvn7AcLI80Q - Siddi damami dance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TRg8k4TdTc - Siddi Dance Karnataka
Inspiration for Attire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00KkKfTDnIU
video.nationalgeographic.com/video/short-film-showcase/00000162-bdb1-d72d-a9fa-bff1b7460000
English Dhamal dance concept with Alphabets
In the Siddi schools, a Kinect sensor along with a TV screen is placed and English Dhamal is installed in the Kinect. The teacher switches it on for the children and they see the various body positions and dance the positions out based on the instructions in the game. They gain points, based on the tracking of individual students and those points are awarded by the Siddi Education Welfare Society as small amounts of Ration for that child's family. This way, there is incentive for the education, and more children will learn English. This will help them go for higher studies to various colleges too, as they are now equipped with the skill of the English language.
The dance is relatively simple and can be taught to the rest of the village by the children too, thus spreading the literacy in English and in course of time, broadening their horizons and help bridge the gap between them and the plurality.