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Khoj International Artists Association offers an annual residency programme forfresh fine arts graduates. Rajesh Ram’s fibre glass and mixed media installation(details on pages 1-3 and 23, and in process on page 4) and Malvika Mankotia’svideo, sound and mixed media installation in process (page 7) at the 2005 residency.

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INTRODUCTION

New directions in our grant making

Poet and critic, Ranjit Hoskote, writing inThe Hindu in the aftermath of the tsunami ofDecember 2004, pointed out that it is inevitableat such a time for most of our attention to befocused on the utilities that are urgently needed.“Is this the moment to shed tears over a shatteredtemple or a drenched cabinet of manuscripts, asubmerged rain-forest or a missing sculpture,some readers may well ask.”

He went on to argue, however, that the lossof cultural heritage is not just about the loss ofobjects, but also weakens our sense of who weare: “…if these critical elements of our lifeworld,by which we construct our conception of who weare, were to be washed away, drowned beyondhope of recollection, what would remain of ourselfhood?” asked Mr Hoskote.

Culture, then, is more than material treasures,and deeper than just recreation or entertainment.Culture is the sum of who we are, a pattern thatunderlies our emotional responses, our way ofascribing value to things in the world. It is never-theless important to keep interrogating culturalhabits, to keep the question of what is of value inthe arts perpetually alive. Only then can the arts,as expressions of culture, remain engaging,relevant and significant in their own right.

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At IFA we have kept the category ‘art’ as flexible andinclusive as possible, while seeking to establish a sense ofautonomy for this field. Lately we have begun to sharpenour focus on the inspirations and energies of the artist.To engage directly with the concerns of the artist is to be intouch with the vital questions about identity and value thatthe arts are ultimately best equipped to deal with.

This new emphasis has taken the form of two newprogrammes, which were announced in July 2005. Onewill support artists to extend their practice in differentways and the other will provide funding for the develop-ment of innovative new performances.

Four grants in 2004-05 also point to our growing inter-est in projects that generate income for individuals, initia-tives and institutions in the arts. One grant is supporting aliterary magazine to maximise the potential of its website toserve as an educational resource and as an avenue for rev-enue generation; another is enabling certain forms of musicin the Punjab to be marketed, thereby providing an addi-tional source of income for the performers; the third is help-ing a music institution to use its teaching methodology tooffer short-term courses for a wide cross-section of peopleand undertake other fundraising activities; and the fourth ishelping to create marketing and fundraising capabilities fora theatre quarterly, which will enable the journal to becomeself-supporting over time.

I would like to express IFA’s gratitude to three trusteeswho have retired from the Board: Mr M Lakshminarayanan,as chair of our Finance Committee, helped to shape ourinvestment strategies; Ms Shanta Gokhale’s perspectives haveleft a strong imprint on the present direction of our grantmaking; and Ms Aparna Sen’s market research expertise hasbenefited IFA on various occasions. We are also thankful to Mr Mani Narayanswami, who earlier served as IFA’sChairperson, for agreeing to rejoin the Board during the year.

Anmol VellaniExecutive DirectorNovember 2005


“It has been something of anepiphany to realise thatwhile each of the artists

transmits a unique aesthetic,they are bound by deeper

links of artistic purpose . . .Each possesses a desire to

make a difference, an ambi-tion to push the boundaries,

to try and make a dent inthe self contained, oftenself-satisfied art world.”

Rohini Devasher, critic. Khoj artists’ residency, 2005.


ARTS RESEARCH ANDDOCUMENTATION

Filling gaps in research on the arts

“In general I find a great deal of resistance,amongst people who run archives and libraries,to the idea of an individual conducting researchwithout institutional backing. This mightexplain the general shortcomings of critical cul-ture in our country,” says Jagan Shah, who hasreceived a grant from IFA to research the historyof the Indian People’s Theatre Association(IPTA). Jagan has charted out an unusualresearch agenda: he is adopting the structure of afilmic narrative to compose IPTA’s history. Atthe same time, he sees his work as locatedsquarely within critical studies on Indian theatre, and says that the project’s successes andfailures will be indicators of “the general prob-lems of Indian theatre culture”.

Jagan’s comments bring to the fore tworelated concerns that have animated our recentgrant making. We are now less inclined than inthe past to support individual projects that arenot linked to a specific context of research orpractice. Since they are conceived in a vacuum,it is also difficult to know by which yardsticks tojudge the outcomes of such work. Disse-mina-tion of the work is another problem, since theresulting manuscript, for instance, may not read-ily fit any publisher’s lists.

Nevertheless, we are anxious to continuesupporting independent researchers because, asJagan has remarked, ignoring them only impov-erishes research contexts. Substantial researchinto the arts in India remains to be done, so theimportance of encouraging both independentand institutionalised research cannot be overem-phasised.

Our support of the individual under thisprogramme has come to take different forms,

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and it has enabled us to provide assistance forprojects that challenge conventional ideas aboutwhat constitutes research and documentation.For instance, many IFA-funded films articulatea critical perspective on their subjects––whichhave ranged from shadow puppetry and templeoracles to studio photography and women pot-ters––but are also animated by the necessarilypersonal and distinctive approach of the artist.

Filmmaker Lalit Vachani, for instance, who iscompleting his film on the street theatre groupJana Natya Manch (JANAM), is not just interest-ed in documenting their work but also in explor-ing how a sense of camaraderie animates theirideologically-driven theatre. These day-to-dayinteractions will perhaps enrich the film in a waythat a dispassionate focus on just the group’s workcould never do.

We have also been funding individualsworking on exciting projects that may have aca-demic significance but are by their very naturelocated outside academia, like those undertakenby Moushumi Bhowmik and Jagan Shah. In thebest instances, such projects combine the rigourof scholarly research with perspectives derivedfrom arts practice, resulting in outcomes that arevaluable for both domains.

Moushumi Bhowmik, a singer who isresearching biraha, the songs of separation inthe folk music of eastern India, often finds her-self involved in a musical give and take withthe musicians she is researching. She sees her-self primarily as a “listener who documents”.Moushumi’s documentation of the folk musicof the region will be an important contributionto the field, but as interesting is how her ownrepertoire is enriched through her encounterswith her subjects. This intertwining of interestsis evident during public presentations of herwork, where Moushumi describes and reflects

on the music of the region and, at the sametime, performs aspects of it––a fascinatinginstance of research and practice comingtogether.

With large-scale documentation projects,however, we have found that funding institu-tions rather than individuals makes more sense,since only institutions are equipped to houseand disseminate documented materials. Twoongoing grants demonstrate how such documen-tation can be effectively combined with researchinterests.

Samiran Boruah of the Assam Museum, cur-rently on a second grant to complete his photo-documentation of the illustrated manuscripts ofAssam, is also attempting a historical reconstruc-tion of this tradition, which shows some affinitywith the tenth century Tantric Buddhist traditionof Pala Bengal as well as Mughal miniature paint-ing but may have origins independent of both.Samiran is also developing a computer databaseof photographs of the illustrated manuscripts,which will be housed at the Museum.

Partners in Urban Knowledge, Action andResearch (PUKAR) is also developing a databaseas part of its IFA-supported project to documentliterature in nine different languages spoken inMumbai as well as generate translations betweenthese languages. PUKAR’s project also includesorganising multilingual presentations ondifferent literatures in Mumbai, generatingtranslations of different vernacular texts inworkshop settings and putting together manu-scripts of selected translations for publication.At the same time, principal investigator AbhaySardesai is interested in theorising about issueslike the life of vernacular literatures in the city,and intends to write an extended essay on thetheme of cosmopolitanism, using the idea oftranslation as a peg.

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ARTS COLLABORATION

Advancing artistic search and innovation

IFA made five grants for collaborative proj-ects during the year, which are exploring inter-connections between seemingly unrelatedfields—art history and ritual performance, film-making and theatre production, and radicallydifferent idioms of contemporary dance, forexample. However, support for collaborativework will now be available under a new, broaderprogramme called Extending Arts Practice,which will also accommodate many other typesof projects of interest to the practicing artist.The new programme was announced in July2005.

The arts collaboration programme enabledcontact and exchange among artists to a signifi-cant degree. In some cases, it has helped to sus-tain existing collaborations, as in the case of thePondicherry-based theatre group, Adishakti,which has been able to further its intenselyprocess-based style of working with our support.In other cases, new collaborations have been ini-tiated and nurtured, like the one located inBastar between visual artist Navjot Altaf fromMumbai and sculptors Rajkumar, Shantibai,Gessuram and Raituram. All collaborators herehave seen their engagement with each other’spractices as central to their artistic partnershipand to the works, including sculptures, paintingsand children’s playhouses, that have emergedfrom it.

In many instances, artists have come togetherprimarily for the purpose of creating a work ofart, whether this be a film or a theatre perform-ance, an installation or a set of translations. Evenwhile such projects have not always been drivenby the need to engage with one another’s per-spectives or positions, their outcomes have oftenbeen valuable in their own right. Finally, we havefunded artists to come together to share skillsand techniques. Here again, while collaboratorsmay not have forged long-term affiliations, gen-uine exchange has taken place, for instance,between ceramic artists in rural West Bengal orbetween exponents of folk and contemporarytheatre in Andhra Pradesh.

The programme has faced many challengesand obstacles, however. Applications were ofteninformed by an individual artist’s creative visionrather than an interest in shared practice. Or,because grants were available, two or more indi-viduals would decide to work together, althoughtheir artistic biographies did not suggest anycommitment to collaborative practice. And sinceexpedient, hastily forged partnerships can befragile, insurmountable tensions and conflictsoften surfaced between artists who were supportedto ‘collaborate’ under this programme.Applicants were also inclined to emphasise out-comes rather than process, and to see the grantsas supporting ‘turnkey’ initiatives unrelated totheir primary or everyday concerns as artists.Another difficulty was that the programme couldnot accommodate artists who—because theysimultaneously inhabited different forms ofknowledge and practice—produced work thatwas multidisciplinary in its own right.

Recast as Extending Arts Practice, the pro-gramme will now support artists to extend, buildon, sharpen or critique their existing work —objectives that they might choose to pursuethrough collaboration or any other modality.The programme will emphasise innovation andexperimentation in the arts, and support artistswho show a capacity for expansion in their work,and whose practice demonstrates a commitmentto artistic search and reinvention.

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7“. . . a willingness to get its hands soiled, to value the sprawling messy process over the immaculate minor product.”

Arundhati Subramaniam, in The Hindu (8 May 2005) onDaksha Sheth Dance Company’s Postcards from God.


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Publicity stills for Daksha Sheth Dance Company’s Postcards from God (2005), which deals with the Mumbai

riots of 1993 and makes a plea for communal understanding and tolerance. Photography by Devissaro.

THEATRE DEVELOPMENT

Building management capacity in theatre

Koothu-p-pattarai (KPP), a theatre group inChennai, has been receiving support from IFA sinceMarch 2003 to build capacity in such areas as man-agement, promotion, fundraising, income genera-tion and audience development.

Unfortunately, in the second year of its grant,KPP’s progress was stalled, partly because actors andstaff did not have a settled working space for mostof the year. The new permanent space that KPPhad identified for its administrative and artisticwork needed modifications and additions to suitthe group’s requirements, which took many monthsto accomplish. As a result, the group was unable tomeet its revenue generation target or furtherenhance the actors’ capabilities or organise theplanned performance tour and theatre festival. Andwhile the Board’s functioning improved somewhat,it was not able to help KPP surmount the problemsit confronted on multiple fronts.

The good news is that KPP has taken steps toovercome its problems. The Board has formedCommittees, each giving close attention to a specificaspect of KPP’s work. With the departure of an ear-lier generation of actors, communication betweentrustees, actors and administrative staff hasimproved considerably. The question that remains,however, is whether these positive developmentswill translate into improved performance in suchareas as promotion and marketing, fundraising,financial management and policy formulation.

Apart from helping theatre groups to enhancetheir capacity for organisational growth and devel-opment, the theatre development programme hasbeen concerned to strengthen theatre documenta-tion and publication in India. This goal has beenaddressed mainly by supporting the theatre publica-

tion programme of the Seagull Foundation for theArts (Seagull). Our second grant to Seagull under-wrote the production costs of the Seagull TheatreQuarterly (STQ), which gives priority to the voiceof theatre practitioners, focusing on their creativeprocesses and theatre practices.

STQ has been experimenting with content inrecent times, but no survey has been conducted tocheck how well the journal’s adventurous approachhas gone down with subscribers or whether it hasattracted more readers. What is clear is that sub-scriptions for STQ have not grown, nor have othersources of income for the journal, and it is difficultto see how it can survive without further subsidy orendowment support.

To save costs, STQ has hitherto been edited,designed and produced by the same team that pro-duces Seagull’s books. They have been responsiblealso for subscriber relations and for promoting thejournal. And it is because too few people have beenperforming too many tasks that sufficient attentionhas not be given to marketing and distribution; toexpanding the base of subscribers and developingother strategies to mobilise resources; and to put-ting in place a proper network to generate contentand a mechanism for feedback from readers.

Seagull now proposes to set STQ on a new anddifferent course. An independent, full-time editorialand production team will be recruited and regionalrepresentatives appointed to cover day-to-day the-atre practice across India. A business plan has alsobeen developed to increase subscriptions, pursueother avenues for raising funds for the journal, andgenerate a corpus fund dedicated to supportingSTQ.

Based on these plans, IFA made a final grant toSeagull in March 2005, which provides partial support for the production of STQ and for the creation of marketing and fundraising capabilitiesthat would enable the journal to become self-supporting over time.


ARTS EDUCATION

Bringing the arts into the classroom

In supporting the pedagogical concerns of artsorganisations, IFA looks for proposals that are inno-vative and address perceived needs. What we alsoconsider is whether such organisations are able toimagine how their arts education programmes canbe sustained, extended and made self-sufficient.

These concerns informed our discussions withthe Chennai-based Carnatic music research andeducation institution, Brhaddhvani, whichapproached us to support its pioneering musicteaching programme. Brhaddhvani was encouragedto look at this programme as an asset that could beused to generate revenue in several ways, and there-by envisage a future of greater self-reliance. As aresult, the grant that we eventually made is not onlyproviding Brhaddhvani with the support that theyrequested, but also enabling the institution to offershort-term music education courses for differentgroups of people and helping it to build promotion-al and fundraising capacity.

Not all valuable educational initiatives in thearts, however, are capable of paying their way, evenin the long term. IFA is supporting the arts collec-tive Khoj to run three editions of a residency pro-gramme for fresh graduates of fine arts schools,recognising that a residency of this nature willalways need to be subsidised. Nonetheless we hope

Installation (2005) in Kopaweda, Chhattisgarh, byfine artists Navjot Altaf, Rajkumar, Shantibai,Gessuram and Raituram, local children and thecommunity. Photograph by Navjot Altaf.


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that our support will have a demonstration effectand convince other funders about the value of aprogramme that is filling critical lacunae in finearts education in the country.

We also continue to make grants that reflectour interest in linking extracurricular activitieswith classroom teaching. Our recent grant toTrista Madan is an example. Trista is offering aseries of theme-based museum education work-shops for middle-school children in eight schoolsin Kolkata. While a number of schools in the cityhabitually take their students for museum visits,no attempt is made to link the visit to the schoolcurriculum. History, as it is taught in the class-room, becomes an exclusively textual exercise anddoes not excite the student beyond the necessityto learn in order to pass school examinations.

Another grant which similarly sought toenliven the extracurricular space was earlier madeto Nilina Deb Lal, who conducted a series ofworkshops with the objective of connecting mid-dle school children in Kolkata with the largercontext of the city’s built heritage along the riverHoogly. Nilina adopted a interdisciplinaryapproach, exploring how history, geography,civics, environment studies and the physical sci-ences, taught as separate subjects in schools, cancome together to provide a more nuanced under-standing of built form. Nilina’s project wasextremely well received by teachers, parents andstudents. She hopes to set up a centre to continueoffering such workshops on a regular basis.

With our support, Bangalore-based danceinstitution Attakkalari has successfully offeredclasses in modern dance to students in ten schoolsin the city. This initiative has thrown up chal-

lenges of its own, since it implies creating peda-gogy for a discipline often taught in informalways. The advantage of teaching dance on thebasis of a curriculum and syllabus is that long-term relationships with educational institutionsare more easily established, enabling Attakkalarito consider making its Dance in EducationProgramme a permanent feature of its work.

Generating reference material for arts educa-tion is part of the emphasis of this programme.Last year, IFA decided to help develop and thensupport a project to track and publish criticalwriting on art in Indian languages. In January2005, we invited Dilip Chitre, Tapati GuhaThakurta, Prabodh Parikh and R Nandakumar toa day-long meeting to discuss the possibility ofcompiling selected writings on the visual arts inMarathi, Bengali, Gujarati and Malayalam. Thefour scholars have agreed to work with researchassistants to produce four separate compilations—one in each language—of selected pieces, cov-ering the period roughly between 1900 and 1940.IFA will convene a meeting at a later date to dis-cuss the findings before deciding on translationand publication strategies.

The Japan Foundation has extended partialsupport towards our proposal to connect groupsin Southeast Asia and India that have beenenriching arts pedagogy in different ways. In thepast year, IFA developed a plan for a series ofworkshops in the visual arts, heritage education,theatre and contemporary dance that will addressshared concerns and forge substantial ties between14 participating arts organisations. It is our hopethat this project will generate a regional networkof artists and educationists working with the artsin a range of pedagogical contexts.


GRANT ALLOCATIONS

Arts Collaboration

Shubhalakshmi Shukla, PuneRs 1,00,000 over six months

An art historian will work closely with a per-forming arts group in central Kerala to identifyindigenous documentation methodologies andtranslate Malayalam folklore into English. Theproject will enable the performance group tostudy the implications of the caste system forthe future of ritual performance and betterunderstand its own historical legacy.

Soudhamini, ChennaiRs 5,00,000 over six months

A filmmaker and a theatre group will worktowards translating the latter’s theatre produc-tion, Brhannala, into a film. The film is envis-aged as a new piece of work that will explorethe differences intrinsic to the two mediums—theatre and cinema—in relation to ideas ofspace and time that are central to the produc-tion. While members of the theatre group will

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“Farmers inMaharashtralaugh twice ayear. Onceduring theharvest andthen duringTamasha.”

SandeshBhandare


act in the film, the absence of a shared physicalspace between performer and audience that char-acterises cinema, will lead to a re-imagining oftheir roles as actors.

Nakula Somana, BangaloreRs 1,00,000 over six months

Two dancers will explore the intersections anddifferences between the contrasting movementidioms of contemporary dance and film dance.They will focus on movement ideas, classroomtechniques and the exchange of skills to facilitatenew work. The collaborative process will be doc-umented and shared in workshops with thedancers of a film dance company in Kerala andin other teaching contexts.

Collective Research Initiatives Trust, MumbaiRs 50,000 over three months

An interdisciplinary workshop that will bringtogether artists and scholars to further exchanges

on Mumbai’s industrial history and the MillLands in particular. This exploratory workshopwill help to give shape to a series of IndustrialMuseum Workshops, each led by a practitionerfrom a particular discipline, which will generatematerial and discussion on the Mill Lands,resulting eventually in the setting up of anIndustrial Museum Archive.

Taran Khan, AligarhRs 1,00,000 over six months

A writer and a filmmaker will together explorethe manifestation of Sufi thought in the lives ofmofussil communities in Awadh and the Punjab.Imagined as a travelogue, the project will enablethe granddaughter and grandfather pair toapproach Sufism through the filter of their dif-ferent perspectives on contemporary Islam. Theproject will lead to the creation of written texts,audio recordings and still photographs that willtogether form the basis of a video film.

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Sandesh Bhandare’s photographic documentation of the Tamasha, afolk theatre form in Maharashtra. See also the following two pages.


Arts Education

Brhaddhvani, ChennaiRs 25,63,500 over three years

A three-year music education programmethat uses technology creatively to simplifythe teaching and learning of Carnaticmusic. This teaching methodology will alsobe used to offer short-term music coursesfor a wide cross-section of people, and pro-motional and fundraising activities will beundertaken to ensure the sustainability ofthe programme in the future.

Khoj International Artists Association, New DelhiRs 6,66,000 over three years

Three annual editions of a residency pro-gramme for fresh graduates in the visual artsfrom across the country. Five young artists

will spend four weeks with an art critic eachyear in order to explore their creativity in anunfettered way, seek advice and feedbackfrom senior artists, and engage with thework of their peers.

Trista Madan, KolkataRs 2,64,000 over one year

Theme-based museum education workshopsfor students in eight schools in Kolkata,which will integrate museum visits with theteaching of history in the classroom.Educational packages and multimedia pre-sentations will be developed to support theworkshops. History will be animatedthrough museum artefacts, sensitising students to the rare archaeological and artobjects in the Museum’s collection and drivehome the educational potential of theIndian Museum to schools in Kolkata.


Arts Research and Documentation

Gurvinder Singh, New DelhiRs 4,83,000 over two years

Audio documentation of the kissas and sufiyanaqalams of the Punjab. The recordings will bemarketed using an innovative two-prongedstrategy comprising direct sales in the ruralmarket and online sales, thereby providing anadditional source of income for the performersand expanding the audience for their music.

Theatre Development

The Seagull Foundation for the Arts, KolkataRs 41,25,000 over five years

Publication of a redesigned theatre quarterly andthe creation of marketing and fundraising capa-bilities that will enable the journal to becomeself-supporting over time.

Special Grants

Vasudha Thozhur, VadodaraRs 4,76,000 over eighteen months

A series of workshops for women survivors ofthe communal riots in Gujarat in 2002.Building on the artist’s recent attempts to inte-grate art, research and activism, the workshopswill be a model for how the arts might engageintimately with social concerns.

The Biblio Charitable Trust, New DelhiRs 5,48,000 over two years

Digitisation of the archive of a literary maga-zine, which will maximise the potential of itswebsite to serve as an educational resource andas an avenue for revenue generation.Marketing initiatives will target universitiesand institutions in India and abroad, makingthe magazine self-reliant in the longer term.


Children’s playhouse in Kopaweda, Chhattisgarh, installed in 2005by fine artists Navjot Altaf, Rajkumar, Shantibai, Gessuram andRaituram with the help of local children and the community.Photograph by Navjot Altaf.

FUNDRAISING AND PROMOTION

Attracting resources for the arts

While we are proud of our record of grantmaking, there is much more that we could dowith a wider base of support for our work. Wecould extend assistance to a larger number ofdeserving projects, underwrite more ambitiousinitiatives, and even enter new areas of grantmaking. We could address systemic problemsthat impede growth in the field. And we couldsustain pioneering and catalytic projects forlonger periods.

IFA established the Institution DevelopmentUnit (IDU) in the year 2000, realising that pro-motion and fundraising needed independent,specialised and professional attention.

The IDU is dedicated to achieving three keygoals:

– Building IFA into a brand name dedicated toenriching the arts in India;

– Raising funds from foundations and trusts,corporations and individuals;

– Developing partnerships with corporations toassist, showcase and disseminate the work of ourgrantees.

Since corporate philanthropy in India hastraditionally focused on developing infrastruc-ture to address basic needs or providing relieffrom various forms of adversity, IFA realised thatit needed to provide companies with a strongbusiness reason for supporting the arts. Based onthis recognition, IFA developed a corporate part-nership strategy, which links activities in the artswith the brand values, product profile and targetaudience of companies.

During 2004-2005, IFA drew on corporatesponsorships for several fundraising events. Wepresented Motley’s plays ‘Ismat Apa ke Naam’and ‘Dear Liar’, directed by Mr NaseeruddinShah, in Delhi and also premiered the group’s‘Katha Collage’ in Bangalore. Two popular musi-cians from Kolkata, Kabir Suman and AnjanDutt, were also invited to perform in Bangalore.Box-office receipts have been used solely to sup-port IFA’s grant programmes.

We are very grateful to the Sir Ratan TataTrust for making a grant of Rs 1.25 crore to cre-ate a draw-down fund for grant making at IFAin 2001-02. IFA can draw from the fundamounts equal to what it raises from Indian cor-porations, trusts and citizens, non-residentIndians and people of Indian origin. Based onwhat we raised from Indian sources in the previ-ous year, we were able to draw down Rs 19.45lakh from the fund to underwrite grants in2004-05.


We have also begun to earn income byoffering consultancy services, using our ownresources, skills and networks. In 2004-05, IFAconceptualised and organised a study tour forarchitecture students and faculty from theUniversity of New South Wales, enabling themto visit the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institutefor Architecture and Environment Studies inMumbai and The Kiskinda Trust in Anegundi,Hampi.

A foundation needs to be widely known andrecognised if its work is to attract broad-basedsupport. The IDU has ensured that IFA and itsgrantees have been regularly profiled in the gen-eral media and, with the aim of reaching out todiverse audiences, also in business publicationsand women’s magazines, for example. IFA’sattractive and informative website, annualreports, brochure and PowerPoint presentationshave also been designed to address different con-stituencies. In addition, we organise public pre-sentations by our grantees and use the opportu-nity provided by our many fund-raising eventsto communicate the nature and importance ofour work to the general public.


SUPPORT IFA. SUPPORT THE ARTS.

Securing your interest in the arts

IFA provides a flexible channel for extending support to the arts in India. Because of the inclusive-ness of our grant making and the breadth of our constituency, we are well placed to match the differ-ent interests of donors with the needs of the arts community.

Through IFA, individuals and organisations can dedicate funds to strengthen the arts in India inmany different ways. You could:

– Assist an arts sector (for instance, the crafts, architecture or the performing arts);

– Address an issue of concern to you (such as arts management or heritage conservation);

– Support the arts in a particular region in India; 18

Kalai Foundation creates a platform for shadow puppetry in Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry in 2004. Still from video footage by R. V. Ramani.See also page 24.


– Fund an existing grant programme (arts research and documentation, extending arts practice,new performance, arts education or special grants);

– Support projects selected for grants in any year;

– Provide assistance for disseminating the results of various projects;

– Support institutional development at IFA (strengthen promotional work or fundraising capacity,for example); or

– Make a contribution to our corpus fund.

Donations to IFA are managed by experienced professionals under the guidance of the Board’sFinance Committee. The use of funds is monitored and evaluated closely. IFA maintains transparencyin fund management at all points in time. Regular reports, both financial and narrative, enable donorsto keep track of the purpose for which their contributions have been used and to what effect.

Donations to IFA qualify for exemption under Section 80G of the Income Tax Act.19


BOARD OF TRUSTEES

NANDITA PALCHOUDHURI, Arts and Crafts, KolkataChair

APARNA SEN, Market Research, Kolkata (Till February 16, 2005)

CHITRA VISWESWARAN, Classical Dance, Chennai

FRANCIS WACZIARG, Commerce, Heritage Conservation, New Delhi

GURCHARAN DAS, Industry, Literature, New Delhi

M LAKSHMINARAYANAN, Finance, Bangalore

LALIT BHASIN, Law, New Delhi

MANI NARAYANSWAMI, Civil Service, Industry, Bangalore (From February 16, 2005)

PRIYA PAUL, Industry, New Delhi

RASHMI PODDAR, Art History, Aesthetics, Mumbai

ROMI KHOSLA, Architecture, New Delhi

SHANTA GOKHALE, Literature, Theatre, Mumbai (Till February 16, 2005)

SHYAM BENEGAL, Cinema, Mumbai

SIMONE N TATA, Industry, Mumbai

M V SUBBIAH, Industry, Chennai

STAFF

Anmol VellaniEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Anjum HasanPROGRAMME EXECUTIVE

George JosePROGRAMME EXECUTIVE

Madhuban MitraPROGRAMME EXECUTIVE

Arundhati GhoshMANAGER: COMMUNICATIONS AND FUNDRAISING

T C JnanashekarMANAGER: MANAGEMENT SERVICES

C Suresh KumarCOORDINATOR: MANAGEMENT SERVICES

Joyce GonsalvesINFORMATION OFFICER

Aparna KolarPROGRAMME ASSOCIATE (From October 1, 2004)

SrimathaPROGRAMME ASSOCIATE (From October 1, 2004)

N Anitha BaiFRONT OFFICE ASSISTANT (From May 13, 2004)


We acknowledge with gratitude the support of

The Ford Foundation

Sir Ratan Tata Trust

The Rockefeller Foundation

The Japan Foundation

Fundação Oriente

and we thank the companies that sponsored our fundraisers during the year:

Bharti Cellular Ltd (Airtel)

Birla Sun Life Asset Management Company Limited

Birla Sun Life Insurance Company Limited

Citibank N.A.

DTDC Courier & Cargo Ltd

Fortis Healthcare

ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company Limited

Levi Strauss (India) Pvt. Ltd

Mastek Ltd

Reliance Capital Asset Management Limited

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VISUALS: Courtesy IFA grantees.

COVER: Art workshop (2005) initiated by children in Kopaweda, Chhattisgarh, and conducted by artists Navjot Altaf,Rajkumar, Shantibai, Gessuram and Raituram, Photograph by Navjot Altaf.

ENDPAPERS: Sandesh Bhandare’s photographic documentation of the Tamasha.

DESIGN: Courtesy Sunandini Banerjee, The Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Calcutta.

PRINTED AT: Pragati Art Printers, Hyderabad.

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