Request for Proposals: Arts Platforms | Applications accepted throughout the Year

India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) invites applications for
Arts Platforms
Under its Arts Practice programmed

Deadline: February 14, 2025

The Arts Practice programme seeks to implement projects where artists expand their present range of practices in new directions. These could question accepted conventions, push new frontiers in content, form and medium, explore new modes of engagement with space, audience and communities, foregrounding a spirit of experimentation.

Arts Platforms:

Often, artists feel the need to come together, to cherish collaboration and ignite collective action within the arts. These platforms enable peer groups, networks, and aesthetic cohorts by providing resources and spaces for knowledge exchange and collective growth. Such networks may enable progressive artists to respond dynamically to socio-political events, create sustainable frameworks for art practices, and build resilient art communities. By pooling resources and encouraging shared ownership, Arts Platforms nurture creative ecosystems that prioritise inclusivity, adaptability, and long-term impact, ensuring that artistic practices are responsive to  changing contexts. It values innovation, solidarity, and the power of collective agency in the arts.

Under the Arts Practice programme, we invite proposals for Arts Platforms that seek to build and stimulate networks and spaces - physical or otherwise - that bring together artists within or across practices on a common ground with the aim of building solidarities, enabling creativity and sustainability of their practices.

Duration of the project: Up to 12 months

Budget: Up to a maximum of Rs 3,00,000/-
You can request for an honorarium not exceeding 30% of the proposed budget.

Calendar: The deadline for receiving applications is February 14, 2025.

Who can send project proposals?

The programme invites proposals from practitioners working within as well as across disciplines. These could include:

  • Performing artists working in music, sound, text, dance, movement, theatre, puppetry, storytelling, magic, circus and other performance arts
  • Visual artists working across all forms including film (documentary and fiction), animation, photography, installation, new media, creative coding, Artificial Intelligence, robotics, interactive arts, gaming/ concept art, painting, sculpture, printmaking, comic books, graphic narrative, artist books, and other visual arts
  • Curators, especially those working outside of the gallery context
  • Poets, novelists, short fiction writers, playwrights, film script writers, comics writers, game writers, creative nonfiction writers, working with literary arts
  • Practitioners engaged in interdisciplinary work

Eligibility:

You are eligible to send project proposals if you are an Indian national. Your collaborators too must be Indian nationals. For details please click here.

Proposal Submission:

You can write your proposal in any Indian language including English. IFA encourages projects in Indian languages other than English. You can send us your queries and draft ideas in written, audio or video formats for response from IFA staff before February 07, 2025.

Send us your application with the following:

  • Your existing arts practice, concerns and interests as a practitioner
  • Your motivation to cultivate the Arts Platform 
  • Provide details about the Arts Platform you aim to create, including its purpose, the partners and collaborators involved, and the network, space, place or location where you plan to host or activate it.
  • Detailed timeline 
  • Comprehensive budget
  • Examples of earlier work, relevant to this application
  • Your CV with address, phone number and email ID

You can send us your queries and draft ideas in written, audio or video formats for response from IFA staff. However, final proposals will have to be in written format only.

Send your final proposal to John Xaviers, Programme Officer: Arts Practice, at john@indiaifa.org. with the subject line: Project Proposal for Arts Platforms (Arts Practice). Please write to the same email ID for any queries and clarifications as well.

Key Dates:

  • The deadline for receiving applications is February 14, 2025.
  • The project will commence by June/ July 2025 for a period of six months.

All selected projects will be implemented by IFA.

Please note that IFA is committed to creating a safe environment that supports, respects, and protects everyone, including children. The applicant must be aligned with this and must uphold it at all times.