SMART: Year 2016 - 2017

In this year, SMART conducted the Second Edition of the SMART Course. Additionally, with the aim to reach out to smaller towns and cities across India, SMART evolved into city-based events, called SMART on Wheels, conducted across two cities – Bikaner and Agartala – to further understand the challenges of theatre communities nationwide as well as to spread awareness about arts management in theatre.

SMART COURSE: July to December 2016

The course spanned six months, divided into three phases – Phase I: a ten-day residential foundation course in Bangalore, Phase II: a four-month mentorship period, culminating into Phase III: a two-day workshop in Mumbai, for the presentation of the three-year Strategic Plans of the participating theatre groups. 

SMART Core Team: Arundhati Ghosh, Sameera Iyengar, Sanjna Kapoor, Sudhanva Deshpande, Sunil Shanbag and Swati Apte. 

Course Facilitators and Mentors: The core team served as both facilitators and mentors. Additionally, Avijit Michael, Milena Dragićević Šešić and Menaka Rodriguez served as co-facilitators; and Menaka Rodriguez, Pradeep Vaiddya and Satish Alekar as mentors for the course. Milena Professor, University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia and UNESCO Chair, Cultural Policy and Management, was also the consultant for the first edition of the course.

Participants: 76 theatre groups applied through the public call for application, with about 25 groups shortlisted for an interview with a Jury comprising Sameera Iyengar, Satish Alekar and Sunil Shanbag. Of these, 17 groups with 28 individuals were selected, keeping in mind the diversity of languages, regions, forms and practices in the country.

28 participants came from 17 theatre groups from 11 cities and towns across nine states in India. They were Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh), Bangalore and Belgaum (Karnataka), Kanchipuram (Tamil Nadu), Kolkata (West Bengal), Mumbai and Pune (Maharashtra), New Delhi, Ponda (Goa), Shillong (Meghalaya) and Vadodara (Gujarat). They represented a variety of theatre practices and aesthetics, including older groups, newer groups and just formed groups; those with their own spaces; those reflecting a range of forms—from the rural Kattaikkuttu, experimental theatre forms, activist theatre, community embedded theatre, to musical theatre.

Phase I Foundation Course | July 2016 | Fireflies, Bangalore 

The 10-day residential foundation course at Fireflies, Bangalore included 10 planned sessions on understanding the groups’ vision/values; exploring how these groups view their work in the larger artistic and social context; on creating and sustaining a dedicated core team to keep the group alive and thriving; identifying one’s audience, understanding the environment and context within which one works and reaching out to them; reflecting on why they communicate, to whom, and how; understanding financial management; introducing resource mobilisation to think about funds and other resources, clarifying concepts, systems and processes; on administration; and the final session on strategic planning. 

During the evenings, there were talks or ‘addas’ organised that brought in an interesting ‘international’ component with speakers from different parts of the world, with open group discussions among the participants and facilitators. The speakers included Sadanand Menon, art and culture critic, India; Jonatan Stanczak, co-founder of Freedom Theatre, Jenin, Palestine; Kully Thiarai, Director, National Theatre, Wales, UK; and Satish Alekar, theatre practitioner, India. 

Phase II Mentorship | August to November 2016 | Via emails, phone calls and Skype calls

There was a four-month mentorship period, where groups worked closely with their assigned mentors on their strategic plan, conducting a strategic analysis of themselves and their ecosystems; articulating the mission, vision and three-year goals; and selecting main strategies to realise these goals. For this edition, the mentors felt that the process of how the mentorship would play out was much clearer to participants, and so they were prepared for meetings during the mentorship.

Phase III Final Workshop | December 2016 | Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai 

The course culminated into the two-day final workshop at Industrial Design Centre (IDC), at IIT Mumbai, where all the groups presenting their strategic plan, followed by feedback and discussion. In addition, each group’s plans were reviewed and critiqued by two peer groups. Participants candidly discussed their experience of applying their learnings from the foundation course in their groups, and the challenges they faced in framing their strategic plans. The presentations were delightfully varied, and gave a real sense of the journey the groups had experienced; a stronger sense of purpose; and a complex and nuanced understanding of the larger world they functioned in. Mentors made some key points about the need to articulate one’s own politics and achieve clarity, and about having a sense of history in the space of theatre.

The Graduation Ceremony for the second edition of SMART Course, held at G5A Foundation, Mumbai, was a celebration, with the local theatre fraternity, important media people, and the donors and supporters of SMART 2016. While the presence of the media was smaller than in the previous year, the venue G5A was a big success and lent itself beautifully for an evening of celebrations. 

Internal Evaluation from participants, facilitators, mentors and speakers; and External Evaluation by an external evaluator, Ashoke Chatterjee, throughout the SMART Course, served to augment the SMART programme further. 

SMART On Wheels: March 2017

SMART On Wheels was envisioned as a day-long programme at small towns and cities with two to three SMART core team members traveling there with one SMART alumnus, to engage the local theatre community in discussions around their needs in theatre. It was designed to share with them our ideas in SMART, and also gather concerns and aspirations from the field. We hoped our learnings would augment the SMART programme to build deeper understanding and interest for management within the larger theatre community. 

SMART On Wheels #1: Bikaner, Rajasthan
March 04, 2017 | Bikaner Theatre Festival, Bikaner, Rajasthan
SMART Facilitators: Sanjna Kapoor and Sudhanva Deshpande
Local partner and host: Anurag Kala Kendra and Bikaner Theatre Festival
23 participants in attendance, including five theatre groups and several freelancing individuals, from Bikaner, Jodhpur, and Chandigarh.

SMART On Wheels #2 - Agartala, Tripura
March 26, 2017 | National School of Drama, Agartala, Tripura
SMART Facilitators/Alumni: Sameera Iyengar and Neel Chaudhuri (SMART 2015 Alumnus)
Local partner and host: Theatre in Education (TIE) Wing, National School of Drama, Agartala
Over 50 participants that included 34 groups and six freelancers, from Tripura, Assam, Nagaland, and Manipur.

The second edition of SMART was supported by the Norwegian Royal Embassy; Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi; Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (IL&FS); and the Bajaj Group. Additionally, SMART received support from Industrial Design Centre (IDC), at IIT Mumbai, with partnership for venue support for the Final Workshop, and British Council, Wales, UK, with delegate support for a key speaker of the evening sessions at the Foundation Course. 

SMART On Wheels in FY 2016-17 was funded by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.