Part-supported by BNP Paribas India. Implemented by India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), under the Arts Research Programme.
About IFA
The India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is an independent, nationwide, not-for-profit organisation that makes grants and implements projects across research, practice, and education in the arts and culture in India. Set up as a Public Charitable Trust in 1993, IFA began making grants and implementing projects in 1995. Since then, it has supported and implemented over 850 projects, disbursing over ₹38.65 crore (USD 4.64 million) across the country.
IFA believes that the arts and culture are essential to individual and community lives, and for a more equitable and just world. As a facilitator, catalyst, and provocateur in the field, IFA supports critical investigations, explorations, and experiments that push boundaries of knowledge and practice, challenge dominant narratives, and speak truth to power — with a particular emphasis on encouraging work in Indian languages other than English.
The outcomes of IFA-supported projects — as books, films, performances, exhibitions, games, websites, and archival materials — circulate in the public domain through showcases, presentations, seminars, screenings, lecture demonstrations, and festivals, helping widen access and encouraging broader participation in the arts.
Five Programmes
Arts Research
Critically enquires into the various histories and artistic practices in India, fostering broader perspectives and deeper understanding through inquiry, interaction, reflection, and experimentation. Platform Bengali operates under this programme.
Arts Practice
Challenges prevalent idioms and conventions of practice, counters market norms, and pushes new boundaries in content, form, and medium.
Arts Education
Places the school teacher at the centre of its work, supporting arts-based training and grants for teachers and artists at government schools across and beyond Karnataka.
Archives & Museums
Energises museums and archives as platforms for dialogue and discourse, generating new, critical, and creative approaches for public engagement with collections.
Project 560
Named after Bangalore's pincode, encouraging artists, scholars, institutions, neighbourhoods, and citizens to engage creatively and critically in the city.
About BNP Paribas in India
BNP Paribas India started its operations in 1860 to support local and global corporate and financial institutions in their growth and expansion strategies. The second oldest foreign bank in the country, BNP Paribas offers a rich and broad suite of solutions across the entire range of corporate and institutional banking, financing, investment banking, hedging, and equity and derivatives.
Today the Group has around 15,000 employees in India across its various lines of businesses and its technology and operations global delivery centres in Bengaluru, Chennai and Mumbai. BNP Paribas has six branches in India, located in Bengaluru, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, and the recently inaugurated GIFT City branch — its International Banking Unit (IBU).