Arts Practice programme

This programme was closed in 2020. 

The Arts Practice programme that ran between 2015 and 2020 supported critical practice in the arts. It encouraged practitioners working across artistic disciplines to question and critique existing norms through their practice. Through the projects supported and implemented, this programme attempted to foreground a culture where arts practice is shaped and articulated through experimentation and critical dialogue.

Between 2015 and 2020 the programme supported 60 grants.

A two-day festival called Past Forward: Celebrating Critical Practices was organised in collaboration with Bangalore International Centre in Bangalore in 2020. This festival brought together outcomes of over 40 projects supported under this programme. They were grouped under six themes: Interrogating Pasts, Confluence of Forms, Engaging Communities, Making Meanings of Myths, Thinking Audiences and Imagining Futures with panel discussions, performances, film screenings, workshops, and exhibitions. A panel of experts comprising Justin McCarthy, Neelam Mansingh, Gitanjali Rao, and Sanjay Kak to participate in discussions at the festival, see the work. the panel then reviewed the programme in 2020. As inputs to the review process, we also solicited views on the support required for arts practice from the larger field of practitioners and supporters in India. The panel made a set of recommendations to IFA. The rearticulated Arts Practice (2021 onwards) programme is an outcome of those recommendations.