Bangalore’s rapid urbanization has led to widespread environmental damage — from disappearing forests and polluted lakes to shrinking biodiversity and falling water tables. Amidst this decline, stories of individuals and communities fighting to protect and revive their natural surroundings were going unnoticed, despite their potential to inspire larger change.
Stories of Resilience
Client
- Bangalore Sustainability Forum
Sectors
- Environment
- Urban Ecology
Services
- Visual Storytelling
- Participatory Research
As one of India’s fastest-growing cities, Bangalore’s urban footprint has expanded dramatically over the last two decades. Studies show that between 1973 and 2017, Bangalore lost nearly 88% of its green cover and 79% of its water bodies to unplanned development. Yet even as environmental challenges mount, there are countless examples of resilience; people finding creative, meaningful ways to reconnect with their land and traditions. Without documenting and sharing these stories, opportunities for collective action, learning, and hope risk being lost.
For Stories of Resilience, we brought our expertise in participatory research, multimedia storytelling, and systemic thinking to help frame these narratives in ways that resonate deeply with Bangalore’s diverse and growing population.
We collaborated with filmmaker Bharat Mirle and partnered with the Bangalore Sustainability Forum’s Small Grants Programme to design Stories of Resilience as a living digital platform. The approach combined immersive field research, community interviews, documentary storytelling, and narrative mapping– ensuring that stories were captured authentically and presented accessibly, with the flexibility to grow over time.
Through this process, we found that:
- Revival efforts are often quiet, personal, and driven by emotion – love for the land, memory of traditions, or grief over loss.
- Food and farming are powerful entry points for conversations about environmental resilience, especially in peri-urban communities.
- Community-driven models of change, like shared gardens or seed-saving initiatives, can help reclaim ecological and cultural knowledge even in rapidly urbanizing areas.
A powerful example is from Sarjapura, a village southeast of Bangalore. Suresh Kumar, a local artist, started Sarjapura Curries — a community effort to revive traditional food systems by setting up a communal “weed garden.” Through workshops and gatherings, Suresh mobilized local women to rediscover ancestral recipes and grow endangered greens. Today, broken tiles from new construction projects are being repurposed to build garden beds, signaling a creative and hopeful reclaiming of Sarjapura’s roots.
The Stories of Resilience website was launched as a digital showcase, featuring personal stories like Suresh's alongside other case studies of environmental revival around Bangalore. The platform invites public participation, encouraging citizens to share additional stories and contribute to a growing archive of hope and action. By amplifying these narratives, the project aims to inspire a deeper sense of ownership and stewardship toward the city’s natural ecosystems.
