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Artistic strokes at IIMC

Indrani Dutta

KOLKATA, April 9

THE sprawling greens of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) at Joka will be teeming with people for a week from Monday. But they will not be the usual crowd of hard-nosed corporates and sagely management gurus.

Instead, the assembly will comprise people from a another tribe altogether -- art impressarios, dancers and curators of folk traditions. They will participate in `Crossing Over' -- a six-day India-UK workshop on cultural festivals and tourism.

The programme is a mixture of lectures, presentations and tutorials beginning with a mission and clarifying artistic ambitions and ending with the outlining of a business plan.

While IIMC will provide guidance on budgeting and cash flow -- an entire day has been devoted to finance -- Visiting Arts, UK, will provide most of the faculty for the workshop, with the British Council, East India facilitating the entire show. Visiting Arts is a UK charity involved in building cultural bridges between countries. It is jointly funded by the National Arts Councils of England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the British Government and the British Council.

According to D. Evans, Director of the British Council in East India, the 46 participants at the workshop represent all art forms. He said the partnership between the British Council and IIMC is part of an effort to draw on the institute's competence in the emerging area of cultural tourism.

While the largest number of participants are from the east, there is sizeable participation from the south too, including that of the director of Auroville, dancer Preeti Sunderrajan Prasad, and the founder of Dakshina Chitra. And all of them are hoping that they will return enriched with the knowledge that will help them plan and execute their future projects better.

While Mukesh Gupta of Rural Research Foundation is planning a project on the documentation, conservation and restoration on Rajasthani frescoes, Vidya Aravamudhan has a mythological theme park in mind. She is working towards bringing together Indian myt hology, dance and art forms.

Pavithra Muddaya is planning to conduct a special festival of south Indian textiles to promote culture and tourism. Deborah Thiagarajan hopes to apply the learning and new ideas from this seminar to the events organised in Dakshina Chitra. She also has p lans for a mega festival in Chennai with architectural heritage as a back drop.

Nelson Fernandez, assistant director (performing arts), Visiting Arts, told Business Line that based on the success of this programme, similar workshops were proposed to he held in South Africa, with which Britain had strong ties.