COMMUNITY ARTS PROJECTS
We offer year-long community arts grants to artists and collectives working in rural or peri-urban spaces across India. In keeping with our aim to provide marginalised communities access to the arts, we are especially interested in supporting projects that work with displaced and disadvantaged communities and address socio-economic inequalities.
Grantees involve community participants through strategised site specific artistic interventions which result not only in beautiful artworks but community cohesion, individual expression, increased personal wellbeing, beautification of their surroundings and sometimes income generation.
While we are interested in receiving proposals for new initiatives, we recognise that many practitioners receive grants to start new projects, but are then unable to sustain their work once their funding runs out. We provide funding for ongoing projects to enable the long-term engagement required for successful community art engagements.
We offer year-long community arts grants to artists and collectives working in rural or peri-urban spaces across India. In keeping with our aim to provide marginalised communities access to the arts, we are especially interested in supporting projects that work with displaced and disadvantaged communities and address socio-economic inequalities.
Grantees involve community participants through strategised site specific artistic interventions which result not only in beautiful artworks but community cohesion, individual expression, increased personal wellbeing, beautification of their surroundings and sometimes income generation.
While we are interested in receiving proposals for new initiatives, we recognise that many practitioners receive grants to start new projects, but are then unable to sustain their work once their funding runs out. We provide funding for ongoing projects to enable the long-term engagement required for successful community art engagements.
- Applications are on a rolling basis. To apply write to artreach.india@gmail.com / mt.artreach@gmail.com
- For ongoing projects, please include documentation of the work done so far, as well as links to blogs and articles about the project.
|
Community Art Grantees include:
URDU PARK AXIAL MARGINS (2015-ongoing) Grantee: Revue (Sreejata Roy and Mrityunjay Chatterjee) For three years artist collective Revue has worked with 16 women at the SPYM Shelter in Urdu Park, Jama Masjid. The women are homeless and support multiple children on as little as Rs. 300 a week earned from begging. The living conditions are extremely basic, with one tin box as a shelter home, and no recreational, therapeutic or skill development activities provided.
With Sreejata these women have been introduced to various artistic techniques and have produced beautiful artworks that have been exhibited in Delhi at India Art Fair 2017, British Council and Bikaner House. This artistic engagement has given them an outlet for individual creative expression, allowing them room to explore their own lives, their current space and relationships with people and the environment around them positively. The project has also resulted in two Open Day events at the night shelter, bringing new energy to the space. They are now working towards a community kitchen and kitchen garden. UDBHAV I, CHANDIDIH, JHARKHAND (2015)
Grantee: Avinash Karn In 2015, artist Avinash Karn led a year long engagement with tribal women of Chandidih village, Jharkhand. Proficient in Madhubani painting, Avinash shared his skills with the women and provided them materials to experiment with. Over the year, all the participants, none of whom had ever painted before, grew skilled in the art form. They painted from their life stories, about their work, village as well as their dreams and aspirations. These paintings were not just on paper but also as beautiful murals on their village huts. The visual narrative form has imparted a means of creative expression to all the participants, allowing them to explore their own identity and surroundings through a new language. Paintings from this project have been exhibited in Delhi where they were well received, the women have also gone on to continue painting after the project's completion and have found this to be a means of added income as well.
* Avinash has been awarded another grant by Artreach India for Udbhav II starting mid 2018.
|
| ||||||
