KHOJ has been based in Khirkee Extension since 2002, emphasising the processes of engagement and exchange all the while. KHOJ’s community interaction has emerged out of an extended dialogical and personal synergy of artists and cultural practitioners with the community of Khirkee.

Over the years, KHOJ’s engagement with Khirkee – the location, its (often changing) inhabitants and its surrounding areas – has given various artists the opportunity to facilitate creative workshops, events, research projects and other participatory activities with different sections of the community. The community programme at KHOJ has always been led by the Khirkee Extension community to produce collective visions and ideas about creative and urban development. The dialogue with the community is a continuous process of engagement, withdrawal, and intervention; it is an act of participation that can translate into a process of introspection, evaluation, and action, initiating the potential for social transformation.

The year 2012 was also marked by the newly furbished KHOJ building. KHOJ wished to open the renovated building by marking its 10 years in Khirkee with the festival entitled KHOJ Dus Tak. Through various activities, KHOJ Dus Tak represented the participatory practices in Khirkee where artists and communities have come together to address the visible and invisible transformation in their surroundings. The project consisted of an exhibition (in the studios of KHOJ and the street in Khirkee Extension) of various community-based projects done at KHOJ. These collectively shaped an array of new participatory and interactive projects by artists and the Khirkee residents. There were events and projects at various locations in Khirkee, which were open to the public, throughout the days of the event. These events featured a cross-section of Khirkee and have been developed in collaboration with various artists.