Borders, Bullets and Books by LUCA School of Art, Brussels

The picturesque Kashmir valley in the western Himalayas, claimed by both India and Pakistan, has witnessed decades of conflict. The conflict has led to a lot of displacement, disappearances and deaths. Disrupting daily lives of Kashmiri people with generations that have grown up surrounded by violence in a heavily militarised area. This Visual Narrative presents the situation of education and daily lives in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and how decades of conflict is impacting it.

Target Audience: The audience for my project are people, who are very new to the topic and are not aware of the conflict. From my limited interaction with people Brussels (during my masters), I have come to realise that many people are not aware of the conflict. The awareness varies from person to
person, there are people who have never heard of Kashmir, some who know Kashmir for its tourism and some who know about the conflict in very little detail. I Identify these people as my larger target audience. With the help of the narrative visualisation, they would get to know about the subject, history, background and how it's impacting daily lives and education.
Since this visualisation is a website, people can easily share, create awareness, spread the message for action or inform their own understanding of the issue.

Objective: This visual narrative is motivated by creating awareness on the prolonged Kashmir conflict and its impact on lives and education by presenting relevant data through a narrative visualisation.
With so much data being available, there is a need for making it consumable for a diverse range of stakeholders that leads to awareness, insights, narrates a story and encourages change through design. As a designer, I strive to communicate complex
information effectively that could catalyse solutions.