Another Hunar Ghar classroom goes up.

Ed with the workforce building Hunar Ghar in 2007

Our friends' children. These girls don't go to our school, they go to the local government school

Holi is the Indian equivalent of the spring festival. In the villages, the grow these bskets of corn in the dark, then on the day dance with them in the night-time on the girls' heads. The taller and yellower the corn shoots, the better.

A motley crew of kids from Bakhel, in their happy days before we built the school! ;)

A view over school in India

Matt Barbet and his eyebrows visits us from BBC London, with some of the local children

Triangulating the site. We staked string into the ground, then highlighted it on the computer for clarity. Using this triangulation we achieved accurate dimensions and elevation differences for the site, with which we decided where was best to build the rooms.

The third classroom, December 2007

A not-so-traditional doll on a traditional bed. The frame is hand cut and the string is hand spun too, from date palm fronds

Some of the children chow down to New Year treats at the make-shift Hunar Ghar cafe.

Our home sweet home for 6 months. It is usually a cattle shed.

Ash (second in from right), the teachers and team in from of one of the classrooms, and kitchen being built in the background. Early 2008.

Hunar Ghar classroom

The harvest comes in, in a traditional manner not seen in England for many a year.

Looking up into the center of our octagonal ceilings made in 2007. We've now refined the process a little (as of 2010) and are using bamboo instead - light-weight, cheaper and greener as it is faster growing and you destroy less plant to get the structural bit you need.

Classrooms under construction

We make mortar for our walls out of mud. Get dirt wet, squelch it between your toes, build with it. Local, non-polluting, cheap and accessible. What's the point of using cement when you don't need to? It also makes walls with much better thermal properties - cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Our first bamboo roof structures take shape!

This lady, who lives near Jodhpur, is only 32. That is what working in an India quarry since a kid will do to you. She will most likely be dead in a few years, the silicon from the dust having shredded her lungs. The also do not have enough food to eat, or water to drink. Think twice if you are thinking of buying some nice Indian stone!

A view over Hunar Ghar

An old an classroom and a work in progress. We are actually (March 2010) knocking the one on the right down - it was built without care, on odd foundations and with next to no quality control. Teddy is an architect I met on the train to Shanghai and he is here to oversee the build of several new rooms, so we can try and avoid these types of issues.

A Hunar Ghar classroom. The bars make it look a little prison-like! I assure you its not!

A student, Anil, insists that I take a photo of him playing a monkey. So I did.

the kids take a lesson outside

Rob chills by the lake in Udaipur.

On site of the first school While the men build, the women ensure they have something to build with.

New rooms reach top of wall height

A bowl of cement lies ready for use on a wall being raised

Deepak, our Hunar Ghar coordinator. From a starting point of no understanding about informal education at all, his grasp two years on is utterly fantastic

This is Girgi, Bhuvanesh's, one of our teachers, daughter.

Puri, halwa and aloo for lunch - chapati, a carrot based sweet and potato. We don't make a habit of giving the children sweet things for lunch, but this was a special celebration.

On the left Shantilal, one of our teachers, gets ready for New Year 2010 celebrations with the children.

Bhuriya, our friend and school foreman, with his two girls Chetalis and Chitori. Bhuriya was pretty much the guy who made it possible for us to live in the village. He was so welcoming when we first arrived he just took Rob and Ed under his wing and made a foreign place seem like home.

These wooden posts are what the bamboo roof structure will attach to.

A roof section is tested for size

A conceptual sketch of our school, march 2006.

Some Hunar Ghar children play up to the camera. It is nigh on impossible to take photos at Hunar Ghar without one of these ones being incorporated!

Republic Day in India is on the 26th of January. Here some of our kids perform for the gathered dignitaries. It is all a bit formal and contrived these days, but we are working on changing all that.

Plates dry in the sun after lunch at Hunar Ghar

Hunar Ghar under construction

Lunchtime at the school

The dry season in the village, as seen from on the school site. You re not going to get many crops out of that.

On the hunt for a place to build our school back in August 2006.

Our teacher, nandlalji with our pre-primary children.

Natural materials with a little geometry thrown into the mix make for very strong building structures, and very light weight too.

As in all societies, booze can be something of a problem. You will often find people brewing moonshine down by the river or, if they are feeling a little flusher, evidence such as this.

The inside of one of our classrooms. An Educate for Life school yet? No. But give it time...

Those people that can't sign their name use a thumb-print to confirm receipt of payment

The kids set up a cafe outside to celebrate new Year 2010

What is this? Breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next few months for a family whose crops were destroyed by flooding. It is a weed that grows in the area.

This is a school holiday- the children were not supposed to have come in, but I arrived at the school to find they had anyway, had got out some instruments and had started playing and dancing!

Our new office with a couple of storage cupboards underneath while under construction. The storage cupboards were supposed to be composting chambers for the toilets of the school, but some of the villagers objected to its location.

The kids paint one of their classrooms using natural pigments and paint brushes they made our by digging up root and crushing the ends to spread out the fibres.

A new classroom takes shape

We love round rooms!

At Educate for Life children are treated like people, so they are welcome, encouraged even, to participate in all aspects of the school. Here a couple of the girls help prepare puris for the New Year celebrations. Children having a great, equal, relationship with the adults means they will interact in more meaningful and life-realistic ways. It also good for the confidence and helps them mature in a sensible way and by being treated as a valued individual person rather than a pupil to be managed, they act in a responsible way that reflects that trust.

Out first pukka window going in! I can't tell you how good it is to have Teddy on board!

The kids take a lesson outside

One of the handy-men who built the initial stages of Hunar Ghar

These little windows make the design more interesting, as well as letting in more light, air and help make it an engaging environment for the children.

These are the bamboo roof beams for one classroom. It is the first time we are using bamboo in this way, and it is pretty exciting. Bamboo is more readily available than wood and replaces itself much faster, not to mention being cheaper too, so it is a fantastic building material.

These window designs take inspiration from the thorn tree bushes that are used for making natural fences, and the interesting shadows they cast. The actual thorn branches will be incorporated into the frame, hiding the metal bars and providing a screen that will make it easy to look from dark to light (inside to outside) but harder to see the other way, which gives the rooms am element of privacy and freedom from disturbance.

Our kids and Nandlal, a teacher, 'captivated' by Republic Day performances ;)

One of our classrooms.

A room with a view: one of the school classrooms

Mmmm. Puris.

Morning prayer in Bakhel.

A rendering of the underlying school wooden structure. We fell in love with our wood!

A classroom and a water tank at the school

Fun mini windows for the kids outside to disturb classes through

When it rains it pours. The ford near our school.

There is barely a straight wall anywhere in Hunar Ghar, here we find one lurking on one of the classrooms built in 2009-2010.

Home to two adults, five children and an assortment of livestock.

Ed having a meeting with RBKS and some women from Bakhel, September 2006. This was very early days - that stupid look on my face is me not having a clue what is going on around me!

This is the kind of taxi that goes between the rural villages. The can get pretty over crowded as you can see, but this particular one is by no means at maximum capacity! We use these taxis to get around when the bike isn't necessary.