India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) is an independent not-for-profit organisation that makes grants and implements projects across research, practice, and education in arts and culture in India. Since 1995, it has implemented over 900 projects that push boundaries of knowledge and practice, and challenge dominant narratives.
Through its programmes and initiatives, and with the core impulse of addressing the gap for funding in India, IFA has tried to make the arts more accessible by facilitating work in different forms of arts, various Indian languages, and diverse geographical contexts since its inception. Many of IFA’s programmes work at the intersection of research, practice and education—placing emphasis on extending practice and explorations, building resources and capacity, and making work accessible. The outcomes of these projects—as books, films, performances, exhibitions, games, websites, and archival material—have been circulating in the public domain through showcases, presentations, seminars, screenings, lecture demonstrations, and festivals, helping widen access and encouraging broader participation in the arts. All of this is available for the wider public to access at The IFA Archive.
Given the wide scope of the programme and the evolving arts field, how does an artist, practitioner, or scholar seek out funds for their projects? Tulika Bhattacharjee speaks to the Programme Officer for Arts Research at IFA, Harshita Bathwal. Together, they unpack the impulse of the Arts Research request for proposals, talk about the ecosystem of arts research in the country from the perspective of IFA, and the various ways in which individuals understand research.
Tulika Bhattacharjee (TB): Let’s start with one of the most obvious questions for me. People often already have a way of thinking about arts and research. Can you share what you (IFA) mean by research in the arts, or artistic research? What does this terminology do?
Harshita Bathwal (HB): That’s a good question to start with. The terms ‘research in the arts’ or ‘artistic research’ can be confusing for some as we seem to be surrounded by multiple arts worlds existing all at the same time. In fact, ‘arts’ itself is a slippery terrain and can sometimes only be contextually defined. One is also led to believe that research belongs in academia and art belongs in the studio. To challenge this belief, it should be possible not only to conduct research outside institutional frameworks as ‘researchers’ but also as individuals immersed in a sustained creative or cultural practice.
Keeping all of this in mind, it becomes necessary to take a flexible approach towards research in the arts. The hope is that using this terminology could become a way to validate the artistic or sensorial ways of knowing, leading to meaningful, even unexpected collaborations and inquiries. We encourage individuals to take the license to express insights gained from their creative practice as research. In fact, what becomes important to be researched, how one defines research, its methods and its scope, who gets to call themselves a researcher and why—all of these could become the subject of scrutiny under the Arts Research programme.
TB: You mention that one must take the license to express the insights gained from their creative practice as research. In this context, what does ‘practice’ entail?
HB: In very simple terms, practice is anything that one undertakes over a sustained period of time intentionally, a mode of doing that becomes a living body of knowledge through which certain conceptions, identities, narratives, and beliefs can be asserted, complicated, transformed, even disrupted. A practice can be creative, cultural, or artistic. For example, an artistic practice could refer to the process of making music, performance, or a painting; practices embedded in shared community values, traditions or identities such as activism or cooking could be referred to as cultural practices, and a creative practice can be anything that involves imaginative thinking such as designing a new game. But these are not strict categories and often overlap and reinforce one another.
TB: At IFA, as with other grant-making bodies, different programmes must have their own set of mandates (IFA also has an Arts Practice programme), so what is the relationship between research and practice according to you? And what do you mean by the ‘practice of research’?
HB: You are right, programmatic mandates play a role in how the terms ‘practice’ and ‘research’ get understood. But these terms are interconnected and often shift in their meaning based on context. One may ask, then: what is the need for separate programmes to fund research and practice in the arts? Well, on one level, it caters to organisational needs and helps us map the various registers through which art exists. But as we do it, we also realise that these categories have historically been marked with systemic hierarchies, specific values and carry ideological weight. For example, ‘research’ is often associated with a certain level of rigour and discipline and the ‘researcher’ is seen as someone who has access to a university or cultural institution. As such, other, more subtle, precarious and intuitive forms of knowing get undervalued. So, when we separate ‘research’ and ‘practice’, we do risk reproducing these hierarchies. We frequently discover that artists or creative practitioners struggle to apply under the Arts Research programme. Moreover, we have often found that the terms of collaboration between someone who identifies as a ‘researcher’ and one who identifies as a ‘practitioner’ are not always well-discussed.
While we acknowledge this rift between research and practice, we also understand that research could be a strong element of any creative practice. To give a few examples from the projects that we have implemented in the past few years—Manjappa PA, a theatre practitioner, has attempted to expand the acting vocabulary through a creative exploration of the actor’s body; Hina Saiyada, a film editor, has developed a virtual reality game on Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain; and Mohan Kumar, a folk singer from the Kadu Golla community, composed a song based on oral histories of his community.
By the phrase ‘practice of research’, which we have tried to emphasise in the current Request for Proposals (RFP), the aim is to subvert these binaries by inviting the applicant to understand research as something that you do, almost like a craft, something that has a process, where the methods need not be fixed but can be intuitive and embodied.
TB: You mention that the terms of collaboration between a ‘researcher’ and a ‘practitioner’ are not often well discussed in the proposals IFA gets. Why do you think that is? Is it due to institutional limitations in India or something else?
HB: That’s a great question. Of course, part of the reason is institutional requirements, such as outcomes in the form of deliverables, reporting and more or less fixed timelines. We are aware of such limitations as well as the hierarchies embedded in the arts. At IFA, during the developmental phase of proposal writing, programme officers encourage applicants to explore ethical aspects of the work and what relations will be fostered and how decision making will take place and power dynamics will be addressed.
Part of it has also to do with the fact that the proposal is usually submitted before the project has begun, such that collaborations are still in their nascent stage and can be difficult to articulate. So, applicants often end up relying on speculations and assumptions.
I would also like to mention that through the RFP, we are not only trying to invite applications but also pose questions to the field. For example, why are the methods of doing research in the arts so rarely informed by a foundation in individual or collective practice? How would we like to make these given art historical categories vulnerable and open to our own lived realities?
TB: ‘Pose questions to the field’—does that mean you have identified certain concerns? Do you want to share those concerns in response to the questions above?
HB: In posing questions, we are certainly indicating specific concerns and inviting applicants to reflect on them. For example: the hesitancy in calling artistic insights ‘knowledge’, the tendency to approach art historical categories—such as ’folk’, ‘classical’, and ‘contemporary’—as fixed, or the assumed need for the researcher to maintain a distance with the subject of their research rather than undergo a process of personal reflection and experimentation. Posing questions to the field is important because the frameworks under which we operate as funding organisations are neither fixed nor neutral. This way of questioning becomes a way for IFA to remain responsive to the needs and challenges of the field rather than being prescriptive.
TB: This process of reflection and experimentation you talk about can sometimes be intimidating for an applicant. What is your take on it? And could you give some examples of projects that have done this?
HB: It can be exciting for some and intimidating for others, for it seeks a certain level of vulnerability and personal engagement with the field. We encourage individuals to draw from their lived experiences, things that have touched them to develop their project, for in the end, the idea is not merely knowledge-production but also fostering dialogue and engagement, developing community, and the practice of sharing as well as receiving. One must be willing to take a curious and empathetic approach as they work on their proposals; however one must also take the license to imagine, in terms of methods, ideas and propositions, that which might not yet be present, but that which is possible. A few examples from the projects that have attempted to do this: Shrikant Navalagiri’s project brought together professional backstage theatre artists from the villages across North Karnataka and weaved the stories of their lives into stage texts and performances; Lokesh Ghai attempted to study the unexplored history of shoemaking in Dehradun Valley to understand what the craft and making of essential objects tell us about the history of a place and people, especially the shoemakers; S Jayakrishnan’s research drew from the real-life love stories of five women reported in newspapers, government reports, interviews, and journals, and culminated in a film that traced the theme of love in Tamil culture by making connections between Sangam literature and a forgotten subaltern musical genre Gujili Paatu.
TB: What you say is interesting. Yet, I have at times had this hesitation that if I draw from my personal experience, it might not be ‘acceptable’ as research or considered serious enough.
HB: That is a good point and in fact it is worth asking: why is research often associated with values such as seriousness, rigour and discipline and why not with pleasure, joy, and playfulness? And what kind of validation are we seeking when we apply to a funding organisation with a research proposal? It is something to think about.
TB: So how does one think of themselves as a researcher in the arts, if they have had nothing to do with the arts before?
HB: I think what is vital is the willingness to question, experiment, engage with your own context in a curious, empathetic manner and believe in the value of what you think is research worthy. Often, we miss things that could become a subject of inquiry either because of how we have been trained to see, or because it can be difficult to be curious and reflect on our own experiences that are such an integral part of us. But as we learn to pay attention to our immediate context, we find that the most exciting subjects of explorations often hide in plain sight.
Manish Gaekwad drew from personal experience as well as those of women and children who were raised in Kothas to study how a culture of music, performance and patronage transformed into being understood as sex-work over a period of time; Sarasija Subramanian collected recipes from artists, residents, staff, patrons, and the extended family of the artists’ space 1Shanthiroad in order to frame the kitchen and food as integral to the site and function of the space as a collective; Shruti Ghosh, for the love of Kathak, went on to investigate the Nawabi culture of Lucknow in Metiaburuz community and trace its history of displacement.
At the risk of being self-contradictory in my capacity as a Programme Officer in a funding organisation, I will also add that it is necessary to not let funding criteria exclusively define the scope of research. Even as funders, we believe that financial infrastructure is an important albeit a small part of good research. What is significant is the networks you build in your fieldwork, the relationships that you cherish and the friendships you make along the way. The idea is not to make something meaningful for someone out there, but something that is meaningful to the one who is setting out to research. Coming to the arts bit, arts is about empathy, argument, inspiration, building connections, giving and receiving care, and sometimes, being mad at the world!
TB: I was once told that to do good research, you must start narrow to talk of something broad. And I think it’s true for creative endeavours as well. When I write things that are personal, no idea is too small to work with. But the moment I think I must apply for a grant, I start to think of the various ways in which these aren’t worthy enough for research. But what you’re saying is that no idea really is too small, but needs to be contextualised, given the researcher’s own subjectivity and position. In relation to that, the current request for proposals specifies a certain point— reassessing what constitutes the ‘marginal’ or ‘dominant’. But these terms are relative and highly contextual. Can you expand on what you mean by that?
HB: That’s true—because proposal-writing is inadvertently directed towards the funding body and can be a daunting exercise. One useful way of going about it can be directly speaking to the programme officer if any section of the RFP needs clarification or you have an idea that you have been working on. Coming to the second part of your question, I would say—to anyone interested in this reassessment—start with the given marginals and dominants and take it from there. It is not necessary to question and deconstruct all forms of marginality and dominance, but it can be a line of inquiry for some who feel the need to expand on these notions or challenge them.
Regarding IFA’s own relationship with the marginal and dominant contexts, we have always been keen on supporting work that has not received funding from either the market or the state, and in the case of research, we have been seeking to support those projects that go beyond the purview of university support. However, even in non-institutional research, metro-centrism has been cited as an issue in the past programme review.
While it has been addressed to a certain extent in the Arts Research programme, as suggested by the projects implemented in the last 10 years from non-metro locations—Ronidkumar Chingangbam aka Akhu’s project on the ‘Angry Poets of Manipur’; Seral Murmu’s research on the history of Santhali cinema; Parvathi Ramanathan’s engagement with the Illangai Tamil refugee community; and Anuradha’s research into the progressive transformations of the Raagni form in Haryana—they remain a small proportion of the total number of projects implemented.
As Voices from the Field (a 2024 report on Arts Research) suggests, the urban-rural divide continues to be the harsh reality of some regions in India, for instance, Ladakh and the North-East. Nevertheless, very few proposals that we receive delve into the more complex question of what constitutes the ‘urban’ or the ‘marginal’ beyond the above-mentioned binary. We have also noticed that relatively few of the proposals that we receive under the programme involve cross-regional dialogue. We would like to know if there are ways in which we can engage the vernacular discourse from various language constituencies, while also encouraging cross-regional research. We would like to keep in mind the reality of the urban-rural divide in India, but we would also like to risk interrogating it to a certain extent.
Supporting work that happens in the regional contexts continues to be a challenge, especially the more private, localised discourse that has emerged, particularly in non-metro contexts and among language-specific communities. Through the current RFP, we hope to invite project applications that might lead to the more complex histories of places, religions, castes, artistic media, and communities being overlooked or understated.
TB: Why has supporting works in regional contexts been a challenge? What has IFA done to make dissemination in these areas possible or more feasible?
HB: There could be several reasons: the register of the English language as the dominant way of communication could be alienating for certain practitioners and artists. Most of our art and culture infrastructure have been located in metro cities, owing to which artists and scholars in non-metro locations find it difficult to reach out or access resources.
In order to address such challenges, IFA has continuously attempted to make its modes of evaluation, implementation, as well as dissemination more democratic by encouraging applications in 13 Indian languages, including English. The programme officers and staff at IFA work closely with the project coordinators through in-person meetings and deliberations. We also organise local dissemination in the region of the project, in the form of community gatherings and neighbourhood engagements. Our evaluation criteria are also based on an empathetic outlook towards the field, the willingness to take risk, and support collaborative work based in community-based knowledge systems.
TB: My last question to you would be about the aspect of translation. The request for proposals says ‘the act of translation that feeds into research’. Is this about translating from one language to another? And how, according to IFA, can the act of translation be considered research?
HB: We are curious to know if there are individuals out there who undertake translation as part of their creative or research process, who are deeply interested in what cultural value an act of translation holds in our society and what is the politics, praxis and aesthetics of translation. The point is not just to support translation from one language to another, but to support the thinking and creative process that goes into the process of translating.
This is the first time that we will be openly inviting proposals in this area and we are quite excited about how the field responds.
The Request for Proposals, in terms of its conceptual framework, derives heavily from the discourse in English. Although it has been made available to the field in 13 different Indian languages, we understand that this does not dislodge the centrality of the English vocabulary. How can an RFP be accessible and meaningful, while not being pedantic or too instructive?
That is an important concern and IFA has made efforts to address this by engaging in workshops with our circle of translators. In these workshops, we have attempted to work with translators as co-creators and cultural mediators. Through a series of online meetings, we have collaboratively tried to arrive at phrases, idioms and conceptual frames based on each language context. Rather than merely translating the RFP from English to the target language, the programme officer encouraged the translators to exercise their creative judgement in coming up with terminologies, restructuring ideas and balancing the tone of the RFP.
The request for proposals under the Arts Research programme at IFA is currently open. They invite proposals from scholars, practitioner researchers, artist-activists, curators, translators, artist educators, authors, philosophers, gamers, or anyone interested in situating themselves at the interface of research-practice and undertaking projects implemented by IFA. The deadline to submit proposals is September 10, 2025. For queries or to submit your proposal, write to Harshita Bathwal at harshita@indiaifa.org. For more details, visit: https://indiaifa.org/programmes/arts-research.html
Images: Courtesy of IFA.