Staying Connected #30 | Thirty Years of IFA | April 30, 2026

Where do you find yourself in the art world? Are you an artist, a patron, a facilitator? Many of us work with these different facets of being here, and IFA is a space that functions in these multiplicities. Last year we engaged with the different proposals that allowed us to glimpse into the way artists work and what they are most interested and concerned about. Thinking about the variety of projects we have implemented, we realise that the shape of this art world continues to morph and become more than what we imagine it to be. We learn and understand. This year is also a special one: we mark 30 years of making grants and projects. Three decades of being witness to projects that traverse boundaries of knowledge and knowledge making, and most importantly, question existing frameworks of the arts and culture landscape.

This newsletter tells you about the projects we have implemented, the festival we hosted in Namma Bengaluru, and how you can support IFA in our endeavours.

New Projects at IFA

In 2025-26, we implemented 57 projects under our programmes from across the country. They represent a wide range of artistic modes—heritage walks, community exhibitions, experimental films, monographs, audio-visual archives, mixed-media, comics, photobooks—to name a few, through transdisciplinary methods that merge conservation, oral history, visual storytelling, and other collaborative processes. We cannot wait to see where these projects go.

Project Showcase@IFA

Project Showcase@IFA is a series of monthly presentations to showcase, discuss, and engage audiences with the diverse projects we support and implement across programmes.

Watch and listen to a playlist of conversations held from April 2025 to March 2026 on varied themes: from a fun card game developed in collaboration with a museum, to the making of puppets by a master who had once given his tradition up.

The Project 560 Festival

In September 2025, we played host to a festival that was all about the city we reside in. Spread out over two weekends over multiple venues in Bangalore, the festival included exhibitions, walks, discussions, workshops and dramatised readings that looked at the Project 560 programme we have been running since 2018. More than 30 projects were on display, and we encouraged the people of Bangalore to engage with them in the most playful and imaginative ways possible. Take a look at the film here.

 

The festival was part of our review process that we carry out for each of our programmes periodically to gauge the needs of the field to understand them better.

The festival was supported by BNP Paribas India Foundation.

Arts Education: Responding to Changing Landscapes
A Southern Indian Conference

In February 2025, we organised an Arts Education conference in Hyderabad that brought together teachers, artists, educators, school administrators, researchers, parents, and students, galleries, museums, and libraries, to foster dialogue around discourse and exchanges in arts education, and address the significant gaps between current art education policies, curriculum frameworks, and teaching strategies. 

Listen in on the conversations and take a look at the report.

The SMART Impact Report

SMART (Strategic Management in the Art of Theatre) was an enriching endeavour that ran for 10 years (2014-2024) to build capacity for theatre groups across India and witness them turn into robust organisations that support their creative work through thoughtful and innovative management. The effort was to establish a home-grown sense of management for theatre—alive to the legacies of theatre management innovation as well as to the particular cultural and practice contexts in our own country. In 2024, researchers Sharmistha Saha and Kanika Khurana were commissioned to undertake an impact study for the initiative. The SMART Impact Report prepared by them summarises this unique peer-lead initiative as a pedagogy that reimagined ‘arts management for India—as a practice of intention, reflection, community, and vision’. 

This study and the initiative was supported by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan New Delhi.

Get Involved with IFA!

Listen to Friends of IFA speak about their first brush with the arts
and why they support IFA

 

The arts connect us to our memories, our lived experiences, spark new ideas, and bring people together. But it also is a crucial lens with which to look at the world around us. It is a way to think, understand, and make sense of life. 

Three of our Friends of IFA, Hamsa Kannan, Prashant Sankaran, and Anisha Chacko, from different walks of life, share their experiences with the arts and how these moments inspired them to give. Their stories show how even an individual way of giving can nurture joy, discovery and connect them to communities. 

Celebrate our 30th year milestone with us, become a Friend of IFA by donating ₹ 5000 or more. 
Contribute online or email aditi@indiaifa.org to know more.

Your donation is tax-exempt under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act in India.