- HOMEGROWN WORLD
- #HGCREATORS
- #HGEXPLORE
- #HGVOICES
- #HGSHOP
- CAREERS
- ABOUT US
- CONTACT US
Shared Ground is a Mumbai-based community platform that seeks to make climate conversations more accessible by connecting them to everyday urban life. Through expert-led gatherings, citizen science initiatives, and collective documentation, the project is building an archive of public knowledge that captures how climate change is experienced at the grassroots level. Events such as Meeth, which examined Mumbai’s salt pan landscapes, demonstrate the platform’s commitment to making climate awareness tangible, participatory, and deeply rooted in local contexts.
Climate change can be extremely overwhelming. There is so much research, so many statistics, and every corner of the world is facing a completely different crisis specific to the place itself. All of this can make staying up to date and informed feel daunting. This is where Shared Ground comes in.
Based out of Mumbai, Shared Ground is a participatory climate experience platform that turns understanding a city's changing climate into something felt. But climate isn't really the whole story either — Shared Ground uses it as an entry point into culture, food, memory, and everyday city life, so the conversation feels personal rather than like a lecture. Rather than talks or panels, each event is designed as an immersive, gamified format built around pictures, taste, touch, and curiosity, helping participants understand climate change from a micro, grassroots perspective — from a street or a park to the city as a whole.
Through events held in the very cities participants reside in, in this case, Mumbai, Shared Ground dissects the intersection of ecology and urban systems in a way that feels accessible. Experts help fill in the gaps, giving participants context that makes these discussions personally relevant. But the format itself does most of the work: these gatherings are built to engage the senses, encouraging people to look more closely at their surroundings and ask questions that often go unasked.
One of its recent gatherings, मीठ (Meeth), perfectly embodied this approach. Held at The Find, the event explored Mumbai's vast and often overlooked salt pan landscapes not through facts and figures, but through a full sensory experience. Participants played Follow the Salt, a card game, and took part in a Sponge betting game; food that traced the salt's journey through the city was served; and collective map-marking let people feel their way into the ecology rather than being told about it.
For many Mumbaikars, salt pans are familiar sights glimpsed from train windows, highways, and flyovers — stretches of land passed by without much thought. Yet these spaces are far more than empty plots on the city's margins. They act as crucial flood buffers, support diverse bird habitats, provide livelihoods, and form an essential part of Mumbai's ecological infrastructure.
Meeth encouraged participants to engage with the facts firsthand, changing climate education into a participatory experience. By turning it into something tasted, touched, and played with, it demonstrated how seemingly small and ordinary things can reveal the larger systems shaping urban life.
Shared Ground is most interested in helping people notice parts of their public life that most people miss. Every event concludes with a "Noticing Prompt," encouraging participants to continue observing their own neighbourhoods, building a community of people who are paying more attention.
Follow Shared Ground on Instagram for further event updates.
If you enjoyed reading this, here's more from Homegrown:
Mumbai’s Mangrove Crisis: The Versova-Bhayander Road Threatens Ecosystems & Livelihoods
The Common Ground: Sign Up For A Commune Rooted In Tribal Wisdom & Sustainable Living
Fever Dream Holds A Mirror To Climate Denial & Shakes Us Out Of Our Apathy
