Annual report 2003-2004 - India Foundation for the Arts

mean that IFA has functioned without a clearsense of purpose and priorities, only that ourwork has not been motivated by considerationsextraneous to the arts. Indeed the perspectivesthat have framed our grant making, and theways and means by which we have assisted thearts, are unprecedented in the Indian context.IFA has emphasised that supporting journeysin the arts is as important as promotingtheir outcomes. We have encouraged artists todiscover new ways of producing art, to reachbeyond familiar forms of expression in theirchosen disciplines, and to make new connections,sometimes with endeavours anddomains outside the arts. We have advocatedthe value of research and documentation notonly to efforts to conserve our cultural heritageand revitalise inherited forms of artistic expression,but also in helping to lay the foundationfor new creative endeavours and enablingtoday’s art to connect with its own history andleave a record for the future.New GrantsDuring 2003-04, IFA invested nearly Rs 1.25crore in grants to seven organisations and 17individuals. Eleven grants are underwritingresearch and documentation on a wide rangeof subjects in different regions of the country.With our support, for example, manuscriptpaintings are being photographed in Assam,folk songs are being recorded and analysed inWest Bengal, heritage buildings are beingmapped in Sholapur, visual culture is beingdocumented in north Kerala, and literary practicesin nine languages are being tracked andtranslated in Mumbai. Five grants have gonetowards the production of films on studiophotography, popular music, women potters,street theatre and oral legends respectively. Inaddition, three grants were made tohelp disseminate the outcome ofresearch projects that IFA had fundedearlier.Under the arts collaboration programme,we made a supplementarygrant to enable three artists to continue workingtogether to develop innovative puppet theatreproductions and provide further inputs to apuppetry group, led by children from the redlight area in Kolkata, which they had helped toestablish earlier. And our efforts to enlarge therole of the arts in education gained momentumduring the year, as we were able to make fourdiverse grants to support interventions at bothsecondary and tertiary levels of education.Shifting PrioritiesThree of these grants—which are respectivelyconcerned with introducing school children tomovement arts (in Bangalore), bamboo crafts(in Pune district), and built heritage (inKolkata)—reflect our new focus on supportingartists and arts groups to enliven theextracurricular space, since our experiencehas shown that educational institutions find itdifficult to propose imaginative arts educationinitiatives. IFA has also begun to pay more systematicattention to generating arts-relatedmaterials for reference and teaching. Partly asa result of two meetings convened in Mumbai,we expect in time to support two major projects—oneto create educational kits on Indianart for use in schools, and the second to selectand annotate critical literature on the visual3This and facing page:T. Pankajaksha’s line drawings which form part of hisdocumentation of traditions of sculpture in south India.See also pages 4-5 and 28-32.