Request for Proposals | Project 560 | Deadline: September 21, 2026

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) invites applications for
Project 560

Deadline: September 21, 2026

Imagine Bangalore as a poet’s journal, a creative coder’s kernel, an artist’s studio, a filmmaker’s edit table, a performer’s floor! Tune in to the city's emerging voices from diverse communities, hidden spaces, multi-layered histories, and collective aspirations.If you want to enquire how we navigate our shared futures creatively, Project 560 is our collaborative playground.

Project 560 is an artistic provocation to look beyond the familiar hubs and zoom into the peripheries with layered pasts, chaotic present times, and imagined futures of a rapidly expanding metropolis. The programme seeks to build a peer network that nurtures artistic, curatorial and scholarly intent with sensitivity to Bangalore’s multilingual realities, its complex caste, language, and gender dynamics, and the critical environmental narratives shaping our urban ecology.

Bangalore is expanding at a pace that is hard to capture. The city’s core artistic energy is not limited to formal white cubes or traditional cultural centers. The creative vitality of Bangalore is on the move. It thrives in unexpected corners, like urban villages, “found communities”, movements of gig workers, migrant corridors, maker spaces, reading groups, pencil jammers, and informal creative economies. This cycle of Project 560 is a call for an immersive, incubation-led journey with experts and practitioners in the city of Bangalore, to collectively evolve a space to engage with the city’s histories, lived spaces, and imagined futures. 

We invite project ideas that could lead to curated walks; theatre, dance, and music performances; installations; exhibitions; community based events; lens-based practices; games; workshops; and publications.

Incubation-Led Journey

Unlike previous editions of Project 560, with fully formed project implementations from the start, this relaunch foregrounds the incubation aspect. IFA is looking for Bangalore-based artists and researchers who wish to develop creative ideas through collaborative conversations with a cohort of like-minded creative practitioners reflecting on the idea of Bangalore as a city. Interested individuals are encouraged to apply with a project proposal in response to the Request for Proposals. Selected applicants will first enter a rigorous, immersive Incubation Lab leading to implementation of their projects.

The Incubation Lab will be led by IFA with invited facilitators over 10 weekdays across two weeks in November. The lab will include shared dialogues, explorations, walks, workshops, and peer exchanges which will enrich the imaginations about neighbourhood interventions, tactical urbanist impulses, year-long curatorial visions or artistic research on the city. 

Outcomes of the projects could variously include graphic narratives, animations, creative non-fiction, musical explorations, performing arts, lecture performances, exhibitions, site-responsive installations, creative coding bootcamps, synthjamming, artistic research monographs, essay films or interdisciplinary works. The presentation of these outcomes must be public and in physical format, with virtual elements in part, if necessary.

Duration of the project

Up to 8 months  

Budget

Up to a maximum of Rs 4,00,000/- 

Who can Apply?

We invite proposals from practitioners working 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 (non-fiction and fiction), animation, photography, installation, new media, creative coding, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, interactive arts, gaming/ concept art, painting, sculpture, printmaking, comic books, graphic narrative, artist books, and other visual arts
  • Curators, especially those working outside of the gallery context
  • Poets, novelists, short fiction writers, playwrights, film script writers, comics writers, game writers, creative nonfiction writers, working with literary arts
  • Practitioners engaged in interdisciplinary work
  • Residents of Bangalore

Submission Guidelines

Send us your proposal with the following:

  • Your existing arts practice, concerns and interests as a practitioner
  • Your artistic concerns or research questions regarding Bangalore, specifically focusing on its peripheries, everyday multilingual realities, environmental narratives
  • Nascent details of the project including potential partners, communities, or urban spaces in Bangalore you intend to engage with
  • Detailed timeline of activities 
  • Tentative budget breakdown 
  • Examples of earlier work relevant to this application, including supporting materials such as portfolios, writings, photographs, or audio/video recordings of earlier work
  • Your CV with your current postal address, phone number and email ID
  • Send your final application in a single email to John Xaviers, at john@indiaifa.org with the subject line: Project Proposal for Project 560
  • For any queries and clarifications regarding your proposal, please write to John Xaviers, at  john@indiaifa.org

You can write your proposal in any Indian language, including English. IFA encourages projects in Indian languages other than English.

Eligibility

  • Only Indian nationals can apply. This does not include PIO (Persons of Indian Origin) and OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) Card Holders.
  • Applicants must have a PAN card and one of the following for proof of identity and citizenship – Indian Passport or Aadhar Card or Voter’s ID in India.
  • Only individuals can apply. Organisations of any kind cannot apply.
  • If there are collaborators in the projects, they must also be Indian nationals.
  • You must be based in Bangalore during the entire duration of the project.
  • Persons who have a past history of financial delinquency with IFA are not eligible.
  • Persons who have failed to deposit at IFA agreed deliverables from an earlier IFA grant are not eligible.
  • Persons who have previously received a letter from IFA disallowing them from applying in the future for any reason are not eligible.
  • Persons currently working on a project implemented by IFA are not eligible to apply. 
  • More than one individual can apply if they have a joint account. If they do not, then only one among them should apply with the others as collaborators.

Selection Process

Shortlisted proposals will be evaluated by an external panel and applicants will be required to present their project ideas to the panel. Project selections for the Incubation Lab as well as implementation will be announced in October 2026. 

All selected projects will be implemented by IFA.

Key Dates

  • Deadline for Queries & Draft Ideas: September 11, 2026
  • Deadline for Final Proposals: September 21, 2026
  • Announcement of Projects Selected for Incubation Lab: October 2026
  • Project Start Date: Early November
  • Incubation Lab Phase: November 16-27, 2026

The final selected artists must be present in person for the entire duration of the incubation lab. 

Please note that IFA is committed to creating a safe environment that supports, respects, and protects everyone, including children. The applicant must be aligned with this and must uphold it at all times.

Namma 560. Namma Project. Namma Ooru.