Jinan KB
Designer, Educationist


Jinan is an activist, designer, educationist working with rural tribal craft communities and children. He has been living in a potter's community from 1993 reviving an almost wiped out practice of pottery making. Healso have been working with children learning from them innocence, aesthetic sense and creativity. He is primarily concerned with issues of conditioning and the bad effects of schooling. At personal level he is trying to recover his authentic self, destroyed by modernity. He is a not for profit individual working for community.

Located in Aruvacode, a tiny hamlet near Nilambur in Malapuram District of Kerala, India, Kumbham has attracted some 80 odd potters to affiliate with it to varying degrees, since its beginnings in 1993. In a long and arduous voyage of discovery commencing then, the community as a whole has witnessed a dramatic turn-around: from being on the verge of dissolution as an impoverished artisan community to a resurgent group of potters whose craft is once again wanted. The kumbham imitative is being hailed as a rare instance of a traditional artisan community rehabilitating itself through the very craft they had been alienated from.

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