IFA at The Goa Project | March 28-29,2013 | Goa
India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is partnering The Goa Project this year! This collaboration involves the showcase of two projects by IFA grantees Savia Viegas and Sajitha Madathil respectively; a workshop on pinhole photography by IFA grantee P Madhavan, Executive Director of the Goa Centre for Alternative Photography; and a talk by Arundhati Ghosh, the Deputy Director at IFA, about crowdfunding for the arts.
What is The Goa Project (TGP)?
In the words of its organisers, TGP is a coming together of leaders from various disciplines to host an “unconference by the beach”. For two days, businessmen, performing artists, entrepreneurs, designers, architects, scientists and social workers, among others, will come together to share their ideas on bringing about significant and widespread change in their respective fields, through meaningful cross-disciplinary dialogues. True to the nature of this unconventional confluence, this dialogue could take any form, from roundtable discussions and workshops to jam sessions, exhibitions and audience-led discussions. In fact the organisers are counting on the audience to provide topics for discussion. Their Facebook page is rife with controversial topics such as, “Do you think entrepreneurs would make better ministers?”, that they promise to bash out at the event.
Dates: March 28—March 29, 2013
Venue: Marbella Beach Resort, Morjim Beach, Goa
To join the melee and contribute your own two-bits visit their webpage www.thegoaproject.com and register. And hurry, there’s just a week left!
1 Unconference = 3 keynote speakers + 6 breakout tracks + workshops + exhibitions + fun + magic + …
Keynote Speakers:
- Dr Sunita Maheshwari
- Vijay Nair
- John Kuruvilla
Breakout Tracks:
- Music and Performing Arts
- Society
- Entrepreneurship
- Film
- Fringe
- Visual art and design
What is IFA doing at TGP?
We just can’t wait for next week since IFA is celebrating a mini festival of its own at TGP.
Read on to know more about the various people and projects we are showcasing at TGP.
Savia Viegas received an IFA grant to study the paintings of Angelo da Fonseca who gave Christian art an Indian face in Portugese Goa of the late colonial period. Fonseca became famous for his controversial portrayals of his wife Ivy, draped in a sari, as the Virgin Mary. Savia has looked at the Indian national movement’s influence on Fonseca’s idea of self and the nation and how this reflected in his work. At TGP, Savia will deliver a lecture focusing on the women who inspired Angelo’s fashioning of an Indian Madonna.
Goa Centre for Alternative Photography (Goa-CAP) received an IFA grant to organise a two-month residency every year for three years, titled ALTLab, which enables four Indian photographers to experiment with alternative image-making methods and share their creative ideas with each other. At TGP, P Madhavan, Executive Director, Goa-CAP, will conduct a workshop on one such alternative method—pinhole photography.
Sajitha Madathil received an IFA grant to expand her research interests to study how women in Kerala have made significant interventions into performance traditions like the Mudiyattam, Singaari Melam and Kathakali and the ways in which such interventions have reshaped the aesthetics of these forms. At TGP, Sajitha will talk about Singaari Melam.
Arundhati Ghosh is the Deputy Director of IFA. At TGP, she will be joined by Anshulika Dubey, COO, Wishberry and Yogesh Karikurve, Co-Founder and Associate Director, Catapoolt, in a conversation on crowd funding for the arts.
Arts and culture do not figure prominently on the CSR agendas of most companies, nor are there many foundations and trusts which support the arts. The government, while being a significant source of funding for the arts, has stringent rules and regulations and unimaginative programming. Thus, most arts organisations are realising that the way forward is to seek support from the individual donor who is passionate about the arts. Crowdfunding websites give artists and arts groups the means and technology to appeal to multiple prospective individual donors; yet the challenge of convincing these individuals to support the arts whose impact is often un-measurable and intangible, remains. What strategies should artists then adopt to use crowdfunding to begin building a culture of giving to the arts in the country? This discussion will explore some of these questions.