We are delighted that in the year 2014-15 we made 40 grants and fellowships, the highest number ever awarded by IFA in one year! This takes the total number of projects supported by IFA to over 400 across research, practice and education, with a commitment of Rs 21 crores to the field, in almost every corner of the country! It has indeed been an enriching journey that will continue for us with new learnings every year...
We have made fifteen grants and four fellowships and that is only part of what we have been doing. IFA has entered its 20th year of grantmaking this month and we are marking this milestone with a two-year long celebration of the arts. In that spirit, we have hosted several events - one fundraiser, four Open Houses, one Film Festival and six Maathukathes. Most notable among them was our fundraiser – a concert by Indian Ocean and Shubha Mudgal in Bangalore...
We come to you at an exciting time for the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA). IFA is entering its 20th year of grant making and we kick-off this important milestone with a two-year long celebration of the arts through events, presentations, festivals and much more. Here, at IFA, it has been both, a period of looking back at the exciting journey and an occasion to imagine a re-energised future, in the arts...
After months of preparation, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) organised its Project 560 Found Spaces Festival between June 5 and June 8, 2014. The four-day event featured a series of conversations with artists from Bangalore who had received grants from IFA for their projects; film screenings; a panel discussion with experts from the field; and multi-disciplinary performances across the city. While many of the projects supported under Project 560 had begun their interventions much before, the festival became an opportunity for IFA to bring together all the work done by the grantees...
The next edition of ArtConnect is now out in print! This issue, broadly themed around the visual arts, features essays on the visual culture of early Urdu magazines, the conservation of fading 16th century murals using digital technology, the evolution of storytelling traditions in India, the rich artistic talent of children in Nagaland, among others...
On September 21, 2013, India Foundation for the Arts turned twenty. We have now crossed the Rs 18 crore mark in support to over 330 projects in almost every corner of the country...and so much still remains to be done! We are also happy to announce that for the first time in the history of our organisation we showcased our work outside India. On November 29 and 30, 2013, IFA organised a two-day event in Singapore at The Arts House. The event was well attended and gave us a chance to share our work with an international audience...
“I've known Anmol for many, many years as an actor, as a visionary, as a person who has supported artists and their art,” said theatre director Bansi Kaul, a former IFA grantee and dear friend of Anmol’s, on hearing about the change of guard. “There are very few practitioners who have vision. It is because of him that networking between theatre groups across the country was possible. Behind the silence of his quiet smile there has always been a mind that cannot be kept from being active without a pause. And that is probably what has given IFA its identity.”...
We are happy to announce the publication of Embroidering Futures: Repurposing the Kantha, edited by Ritu Sethi. Supported by the Infosys Foundation, this book documents the journey of kantha embroidery from a household custom of women in Bengal to a staple of shops and boutiques in the big cities where it is now sold as an expensive work of art. In narrating the story of the kantha through interviews with collectors, inheritors, designers and producers, the book also explores the different ways in which its survival can be ensured...
IFA is proud to announce that the latest issue of ArtConnect, our bi-annual magazine for the arts, is in print. Focusing on the Ramayana, and brought out in collaboration with the Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts Research, it features critical essays by painter, writer and art critic Gulammohammed Sheikh, historian Romila Thapar, political psychologist and social theorist Ashis Nandy, poet, writer and translator, Eddin Khoo and Tamil writer and researcher in women’s studies, C S Lakshmi...
In the last quarter, IFA crossed an important milestone—the launch of its new office in Mumbai. After frequent requests from grantees, trustees, patrons, friends and other well-wishers to expand our base, we finally opened our doors to Mumbai on April 7 and 8, 2012 with a grand festival at the Prithvi Theatre. We are grateful to Prithvi Theatre, Project 88, Art India and Mohile Parikh Centre (MPC), who will partner IFA to host these events in Mumbai...