India Foundation for the Arts is a national, non-profit, the grantmaking organisation that supports the practice, research and education in the arts in India. Established as a public trust in 1993, IFA is headquartered in Bangalore. Its founder-director, Anmol Vellani previously worked for the Ford Foundation. IFA's mission is to enrich the arts in India, by providing support for innovative projects and capacity building across all the arts.
Management
The Founder Director, Anmol Vellani, is a professional in arts management and organised philanthropy. Our current Executive Director, Arundhati Ghosh is an internationally recognised professional in the arts and organised philanthropy. The staff at IFA comes with diverse backgrounds and experiences and is encouraged to engage with and respond to the changing needs and aspirations of the field. The Board of Trustees bring to their work considerable experience in the arts and humanities, industry, finance, public affairs, communication and law. They share a common passion for the enrichment of arts and culture.
Programmes
The grant programmes of IFA respond to demand for assistance, while also giving encouragement to new perspectives and directions in the arts. IFA has made over 450 grants across states. The Arts Research programme supports scholars, researchers, and practitioners to undertake research into the histories and expressions of artistic practices in India. It seeks to foster wider perspectives, understandings, interpretations and engagements in the arts. The Arts Education programme places the school teacher at the centre of its work and supports artists through grants, towards arts-based education in Government Schools in Karnataka. It maintains a continuous dialogue with the National Council of Research Education and Training, the Directorate of Public Instruction, Karnataka, the Department of State Education, Research and Training, Karnataka, and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, to intensify its capacity building programme. The Arts Practice programme supports critical practice in the arts. It encourages practitioners working across artistic disciplines to question existing notions through their practice. The programme seeks to establish a culture where arts practice is constantly being shaped and articulated through experimentation, critique and dialogue. The Archival and Museum Fellowships support practitioners and researchers to activate the collections in archives and museums through curatorial and artistic interventions.The Fellowships enable collections to come alive and be made accessible to a large public, with the hope that this engagement will allow museums and archives, to function less as repositories and more as sites that influence discourse, and creativity in the arts.
