IFA Announces The Arts Practice Programme (2021 Onwards)

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)
announces
the
Arts Practice programme
(2021 onwards)

The Arts Practice programme launched in 2014 was reviewed in 2020 by a panel of experts comprising Justin McCarthy, Neelam Mansingh, Gitanjali Rao and Sanjay Kak. As inputs to the review process, we solicited views on the support required for arts practice from the larger field of practitioners and supporters in India (Please refer to our Voices from the Field Reports for the Visual Arts and Films and for Performance and Literature). The panel made a set of recommendations to IFA. This rearticulated Arts Practice programme is an outcome of those recommendations.

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.

Projects could take the form of an exploration of nascent ideas, production of an artistic work, creation of spaces for exchange and dialogue through seminars, residencies and workshops, and fostering of platforms that attempt to build solidarities among practitioners. The programme encourages work in Indian languages other than English and collaborations within and across practices. You are welcome to discuss and develop your proposal through interactions with IFA staff and send draft proposals in written and audio/video formats.

Sumana Chandrashekar (Programme Lead) and John Xaviers (Programme Officer, Arts Practice)
speak about the rearticulated Arts Practice programme

The programme will implement projects under the following categories:

1. Explorations:
To probe, test and play around with ideas that are nascent, risky or unprecedented, which may or may not lead into the making of an artwork later on. This could include researching, script-writing, jamming, storyboarding, rehearsing, sampling and other forms of exploratory work that are used to examine ideas.
Budget: Up to a maximum of Rs 75,000.
Calendar: Proposals will be invited once a year through an open Request for Proposals. This will be announced in July 2021.

2. Productions:
To create performative, aural, visual, digital, literary, or interdisciplinary work which includes these forms. This could include theatre, dance and music performances, installations, exhibitions, books, zines and other publications, film and moving image presentations, games, interfaces and other digital artworks, and other forms yet to be imagined.
Budget: Up to a maximum of Rs 5,00,000.
Calendar: Proposals are accepted once a year through an open Request for Proposals.

3. Workshops, Residencies, Seminars:
To create environments and situations which foster exchange, dialogue, debate, learning, and mentorship. This may include residencies that nurture artists, encourage collaboration and facilitate experimentation; workshops, seminars or other forms of gathering that help build knowledge, generate insight and expand arts practice/s.
Budget: Up to a maximum of Rs 3,00,000.
Calendar: Proposals are accepted throughout the year, starting May 01, 2021.

4. Arts Platforms:
To build and stimulate networks and spaces - physical or otherwise - that bring together artists within or across practices on common ground with the aim of building solidarities, enabling creativity and sustainability of their practices.
Budget: Up to a maximum of Rs 1,50,000.
Calendar: Proposals are accepted throughout the year, starting June 01, 2021.

(Funds may be available for dissemination of work previously implemented by IFA. These projects can be developed through interactions with Programme Officers. The budget will be decided on a case by case basis.)

Who can send project proposals?

The programme invites proposals from practitioners working within as well as across disciplines. These could include:

  • Performing artists working in music, sound, text, dance, movement, theatre, puppetry, storytelling, magic, circus and other performance arts.
  • Visual artists working across all forms including film (documentary and fiction), animation, photography, installation, new media, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, interactive arts, gaming, painting, sculpture, printmaking, comic book, graphic narrative, artist book and other visual arts.
  • Curators, especially those working outside of the gallery context.
  • Poets, novelists, playwrights working with literary arts.
  • Practitioners engaged in interdisciplinary work.

Eligibility

You are eligible to send project proposals if you are an Indian national. Your collaborators too must be Indian nationals. For details, please click here.

Please write to Sumana Chandrashekar at sumana@indiaifa.org or John Xaviers at john@indiaifa.org for any questions or enquiries.

You can also write to:
Programme Officer, Arts Practice
India Foundation for the Arts
'Apurva' Ground Floor, No 259, 4th Cross
Raj Mahal Vilas, 2nd Stage, 2nd Block
Bangalore – 560 094
Phone: 080-2341 4681 / 82

All selected projects will be implemented by IFA.

The Arts Practice programme is supported by Sony Pictures Entertainment Fund.