India Foundation for the Arts
![]() | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (August 2018) |
India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) an independent, nationwide, not-for-profit, organisation that makes grants and implements projects across practice, research and education in the arts and culture in India. Established as a public trust in 1993, IFA is headquartered in Bangalore. Since then, IFA has supported and implemented over 850 projects across the country. Its founder-director, Anmol Vellani previously worked for the Ford Foundation.
IFA acts as a facilitator, catalyst and provocateur in the field to enrich the arts in India, by supporting and implementing critical investigations, explorations and experiments that push boundaries of knowledge and practice, and challenge dominant narratives.[1]
The IFA Archive was launched in 2018 as a space that holds the diverse materials of the projects supported and implemented by IFA over the years, currently featuring materials from more than 500 projects online. The physical space in Bangalore holds materials of over 700 projects and is open to visitors by appointment.[2]
Management
[edit]The Founder Director, Anmol Vellani, is a professional in arts management and organised philanthropy. He has been succeeded by Arundhati Ghosh, also a professional in the arts and organised philanthropy. Menaka Rodriguez is the current Executive Director of the organisation.
The staff at IFA comes with diverse backgrounds and experiences and is encouraged to engage with and respond to the changing needs and aspirations of the field.
Constituted on a national basis, the Board of Trustees holds primary responsibility for the growth and sustenance of IFA. The Trustees are closely involved in determining management policies and programme goals, and bring considerable experience in industry, finance, public affairs, law, communications, the arts and the humanities. They share a common passion for the enrichment of arts and culture.
Programmes
[edit]The programmes at IFA respond to demand for assistance, while also giving encouragement to new perspectives and directions in the arts, especially encouraging work in Indian languages other than English.
The Arts Research programme engages scholars, researchers, and practitioners to research various histories and expressions of artistic practices in India. It seeks to foster wider perspectives, understandings, interpretations and engagements in the arts.
The Arts Practice programme seeks to implement projects that enable artists to expand their present range of practices in new directions. These could question accepted conventions, push new frontiers in content, form and medium, explore new modes of engagement with space, audience and communities, foregrounding a spirit of experimentation. The programme implements projects under the following categories:
- Explorations
- Productions
- Workshops/ Residencies
- Arts Platforms
The Arts Education programme is one of the organisation's flagship programmes. It announced itself in 1998-99, with the conviction that it is only through the arts that students and youngsters would inculcate a quest for lifelong learning. The programme was reviewed in 2008-09 and the recommendations from it led to the next avatar of the Arts Education programme that was titled Kali Kalisu (‘learn and teach’ in Kannada). It maintains a continuous dialogue with the National Council of Educational Research and Training, the Directorate of Public Instruction, Karnataka, and the Department of State Education, Research and Training, Karnataka to intensify its capacity building programme.
The Archives and Museums programme has a twofold objective: to provide arts practitioners and researchers with an opportunity to generate new, critical and creative approaches for public engagement with archives and museum collections; and to energise these spaces as platforms for dialogue and discourse.
The Project 560 programme is an IFA initiative for Bangalore. Taking its name from the first three digits of Bangalore's pincode, Project 560 proposes to encourage artists, scholars, institutions and neighbourhoods to engage creatively and critically with the city. In doing so, it aims to provide citizens with a kaleidoscopic experience of exploring the city that would enable them to reimagine the city and their relationship with it in novel ways.
Board of Trustees
[edit]- Ajai Kumar Singh, Civil Service, Bangalore is the Chairperson
- Alok Rai, Language and Literature, Allahabad
- Aparna Sinha, Advertising and Market Research, Kolkata
- Arti Kirloskar, Art and Industry, Pune
- Lakshmi Subramanian, History and Culture, Goa
- Nandita Palchoudhuri, Crafts, Kolkata
- Navtej S Johar, Dance, New Delhi
- S Subramaniam, Finance, Bangalore
- Saajan Poovayya, Law, Bangalore
- Sobha Nambisan, Civil Service, Bangalore
- Vivek Shanbhag, Language and Literature, Bangalore
External links
[edit]- IFA website
- Mapping the journey from Bangalore to Bengaluru, The New Indian Express, 09 September 2024
- How Kathak impacted the picturisation of song and dance in Hindi cinema, The Hindu, 29 July 2024
- Beyond Raja Deen Dayal: The Pioneering Photography of Ramchandra Rao and Pratap Rao of Indore, The Wire, 27 July 2024
- All the world's a stage, quite literally, HT Brunch, 27 July 2014 Archived 12 August 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- For the sense of seamless perspective, The Hindu, 23 July 2014
- http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/J5D60o7E2vLURRgDoC2ZMJ/Why-we-dont-value-our-arts-enough.html Why we don’t value our arts enough, 17 August 2013
- Chronicles of Bangalore retold, 6 June 2014
- [1] Guerrilla Art, Business Standard, 8 March 2014
Notes
[edit]- ^ "India Foundation for the Arts | India Foundation for the Arts". indiaifa.org. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
- ^ "India Foundation for the Arts". theifaarchive.org. Retrieved 5 September 2024.