This project, ‘Auto Akka and the Hot Seat’, tackles Bangalore city’s urban heat challenge by creating a bilingual children’s storybook featuring an auto-rickshaw driver, explaining heat’s causes and consequences.
Bangalore city’s rising urban heat disproportionately affects outdoor workers and vulnerable communities. Our project tackles this urgent challenge with a unique approach to climate education. At its heart is an illustrated, bilingual storybook for children, ‘Auto Anna and the Hot Seat,’ which tells the story of urban heat through the eyes of an auto-rickshaw driver. Based on real interviews, it makes complex ideas like climate change, thermal comfort, and hydration relatable through a journey across the city. Beyond the book, we hope to create a public archive of invaluable community insights, including audio, video, photographs, and quotes. We will also place pamphlets with QR codes in auto-rickshaws, connecting passengers directly to the digital storybook and this archive. These pamphlets will also act as conversation guides, fostering dialogue between drivers and passengers about the lived experiences of urban heat. This project is a blend of visual storytelling, community narratives, and public engagement, all working towards a more resilient city.
By blurck & Nithya Gowda.
Project Start Date : September 2025
Contact details:
Image credits: Project Team
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Updates
The team has been engaging with auto drivers through site visits, interviews as well as focussed workshops. More interactions are planned in the coming weeks. The team developed an interactive game for the auto drivers, adapting a game from the Heat.in.Bangalore project. The engagements so far have offered rich insights that have in turn informed a clear engagement strategy.
The team is also working on finalising the storybook’s narrative and visual style, with a new illustrator who has been onboarded. Emphasis has been paid to evolve the storyline through collaboration and feedback from various team members and external contributors.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Meetings with auto unions and establishing field contacts.
- Direct Research: Interviews with male and female auto-rickshaw drivers at varied locations.
- Tool Development: Design and production of the Heat Card Game for drivers.
- Field Workshop: First formal workshop with Peace Auto Group at Yuvaka Sangha.
- Narrative Development: Concept note (Eng/Kan); and defined storyline outline
- Collaborator Onboarding: Search and successful onboarding of Illustrator Radha Patkar.
- Visual Identity: Development of design boards and social media graphic language.
- Content Strategy: Drafting questions for social media and repository curation.
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Interactive workship with drivers from the Peace Auto group at Yuvaka Sangha, Bangalore.
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A driver pauses to reflect on a “solution card” suggesting she share water with fellow drivers, at the workshop at Yuvaka Sangha in Bangalore.
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When shown the risk card of “Burning Skin”, an auto rickshaw driver from the Peace Auto group looks at the suggested solutions from the group, and contemplates on the best possible solution, at the workshop at Yuvaka Sangha.
Fifteen dedicated auto rickshaw drivers from the Peace Auto group participated in the session at Yuvaka Sangha. Through this specialised game, the group collectively tackled the growing challenges of climate and heat risks in urban Bangalore.
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in-depth interviews with Bangalore’s auto rickshaw drivers provided vital insights to the project. These conversations revealed the lived experience of heat risks and the resourceful, everyday strategies drivers use to combat the rising temperatures.