The last four months India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) made two important announcements. The first, was the launch of IFA's new Arts Practice programme, which was conceptualised as per the recommendations made by a panel of experts comprising of Sadanand Menon, Madhusree Dutta, Shubha Mudgal, and Vivan Sundaram. This panel reviewed our earlier New Performance and Extending Arts Practice programmes to make way for this new one.

The second, was the announcement of our found spaces initiative—Project 560. Of 23 proposals received, we shortlisted 16 for review by an external panel comprising of Sudhanva Deshpande, Krishna Devanandan, Vivek Shanbhag and Suresh Moona. The panel awarded grants to six artists.

We also made three new grants under the Extending Arts Practice programme, and supported one Museum Fellowship and one Archival Fellowship, in the last four months.

In other news, we organised the showcase of three grants in Bangalore, one in Kolkata, one in Delhi, three in Mumbai and one in Guwahati; three editions of MaathuKathe, our 'art addas' in office; and an Open House meeting. We also supported a symposium titled Locating Art Histories by the Asia Art Archive and the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi; and an exhibition, titled New Models on Common Ground, organised as part of the month-long INSERT2014 exhibition and symposium.

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. To buy your copy, write to contactus@indiaifa.org.

In this edition of Slant/Stance, we speak to our very own Sumana Chandrashekar, Programme Executive for the Arts Practice programme. Prior to her current role, she was the programme executive for the New Performance programme under which she oversaw the conception of IFA's Project 560 initiative. In this interview, she talks about IFA's motivations behind creating an initiative of this nature.

Finally, thank you for your overwhelming support towards increasing IFA's presence online. Your 'likes', 'tweets', and 'shares' have helped us expand the reach of our work. We hope you will continue to visit our pages on Facebook and Twitter and share your views with us. And, we hope you enjoy the contents of this newsletter.

Much love,
The IFA Team

The ARD programme sent out its Request for Proposals (RFP) in March.

If you're a researcher or an artist interested in: studying changing practices in the contemporary arts or exploring how traditions are reconstructed, do visit our website to find out how you can apply for a grant to realise your project idea.

Apart from English, you can read our RFP in Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam and Urdu.

Watch this video interview with Tanveer Ajsi, Programme Executive for ARD, in which he talks about the process through which an application gets selected, with examples from projects he helped develop last year.

We made three grants under EAP, between January and March 2014; at the end of the last financial year.

Filmmaker Qaushik Mukherjee, better known as Q, is making a film on the Bengali writer Nabarun Bhattacharya. Nabarun has long been a voice of dissent against the establishment and Bengali 'Bhadralok' culture. Through his film Q seeks to understand Nabarun as a creator who challenged various frontiers of Bengali language and culture.

Visual artists Tushar Joshi and K Balamurugan were awarded a grant to explore the Dry and Wet Plate Collodion photographic process, to document the change in beliefs, lifestyles and occupations of village communities under the shadow of globalisation in the village of Sanakari in Tamil Nadu and Danya in Almora, Uttarakhand.

Filmmaker Rajula Shah, is working on a poetic cinematic exploration of the journey of Warkaris, the Vaishnavite pilgrims who undertake an annual journey to Pandharpur in Maharashtra. Rajula's project will culminate in a multimedia installation, consisting of an interactive web-based map of all her footage coupled with audio-video and textual material.

The EAP programme is now closed. All practicing artists, seeking a grant need to apply through the Arts Practice programme.

We made six grants for Project 560—A Found Spaces Initiative under NP.

Project 560 is an artistic quest initiated by India Foundation for the Arts, to recode the city of Bangalore through performances in a bid to encourage artists to creatively engage with found spaces in Bangalore, reimagine them and bring them alive. Projects supported under this initiative are being staged through the months of April and May and will culminate in a festival between June 5-8, 2014. Click here to download the Project 560 app and stay up-to-date on all the performances in various locations across Bangalore.

The theatre group, Rangasiri, is creating a theatre performance around the Kempegowda tower located in Mekhri circle. The tower, constructed by Kempegowda II, the grandson of the city's founder Kempegowda, is closely associated with the history of Bangalore. Through interviews with historians and an investigation of historical records, Rangasiri will create a theatrical piece that will be performed in and around the tower.

Dimple Shah, a performance artist, is creating work in the Basavanagudi area. Domiciled in Bangalore for about 20 years, Dimple will engage the characteristic features of the neighbourhood – its history, its colours and its people – in an attempt to examine questions about her own roots and identity.

Mallika Prasad and Ram Ganesh Kamatham of the Actors Ensemble India Forum are creating a site-specific performance on an artificial climbing wall located within Phoenix Market City mall, Mahadevapura. As actors and avid mountaineers, Mallika and Ram Ganesh will develop the performance through a process of research into and experimentation with aerial movements, visual designs and climbing techniques.

Ten artists from the 080:30 Collective will create site-specific performances in various parts of the city around themes that explore the many hues of life lived in a city in transition. Each of the artists will work with five different spaces and their projects will be chosen through a process of discussion and evaluation within the collective.

Performance artist Jeetin Rangher is creating a site-specific performance at Sree Vinayaka Kalyan Mantapa, a building on Bellary Road that used to be a marriage hall until it was recently sliced into half during the road construction process. Over the next three months, Jeetin will facilitate visual arts and performance arts works on the site in collaboration with visual artists Bhuvanesh Kumar and Katarina Rašić.

Theatre artist Mounesh Badiger is creating a performance around the life and works of eminent Kannada writer Masti Venkatesha Iyengar. The performance will begin with a walk starting on the road in Gavipuram that is named after the writer, continue into Gandhi Bazaar and culminate at Bugle Rock Park, Basavangudi, which Masti frequented.

The NP programme is now closed. All practicing artists, seeking a grant need to apply through the Arts Practice programme.

The NP and EAP programmes went through a review last year and based on the recommendations of the panel, consisting of Sadanand Menon, Madhusree Dutta, Shubha Mudgal, and Vivan Sundaram, the Arts Practice programme was shaped and launched in April 2014.

This programme supports critical practice in the arts, was launched. It encourages practitioners working across artistic disciplines to question existing notions through their practice. The programme seeks to establish a culture where arts practice is constantly being shaped and articulated through experimentation, critique and dialogue.

For further information on our eligibility criteria and how you can apply, please read our programme note. To know more, write to shubham@indiaifa.org or sumana@indiaifa.org.

The Archival and Museum Fellowships underwent a review last year. A panel of experts comprising of Jeebesh Bagchi, Lawrence Liang and Janaki Nair, suggested that IFA treat the Fellowships strategically and adopt processes for building discourse. It was suggested that IFA build partnerships with archival and museum spaces before inviting curators and artists to work with them. The panel also recommended that IFA support workshops and seminars that could build an environment for discussion and debate among theorists and practitioners.

IFA awarded two Fellowships in the last four months.

Kush Bhadwar received an Archival Fellowship to research, collate and document materials from archives related to the practice of the revolutionary poet Gaddar, who has been an active advocate for a separate state of Telangana.

Latika Gupta received a Museum Fellowship to research the collection of the Munshi Aziz Bhat Museum of Central Asian And Kargil Trade Artifacts. Her research will culminate in an exhibition that will open in the Museum at the end of August/early September, 2014. The exhibition will re-present and contextualize the large collection of historical and ethnographic objects in the museum by constructing narratives around the objects, texts and legacies of the people who have traversed these regions.