Tasveer Ghar Fellowships 2007
Who is eligible to apply?
This fellowship is ideally meant for individuals or groups who already have an important collection of popular arts that needs to be archived, digitized, or restored, but may not have the resources or know-how to go about doing that. We are also open to proposals that seek to start a new collection or document/photograph something that is available in a public space and needs urgent attention (say, some unique political graffiti on the streets of Kolkata!). Currently we offer this fellowship to individuals or groups based in India only. In exceptional cases, we may consider projects from outside India, but the subject of research/documentation would have to be Indian and the artwork needs to be sent to New Delhi, India. There is no bar of age or educational qualification, as long as you are capable to conducting the entire research/documentation on your own, and possibly provide a context to your work in the form of a text report.
What would a fellow be expected to do?
You are free to carry on your research/documentation in any manner that suits your subject. However, after the approval of your proposal and the granting of the fellowship, Tasveer Ghar may present some advice or guidelines on how you could go about conducting your fellowship. At the onset of your fellowship period, you should ideally make a calendar of 6 months period and follow it accordingly. You are expected to make/organize your arts collection and/or write a report about it. You could either send the artworks to us (at your cost) for digitization, or digitize it yourself using the guidelines suggested by us. The collected material sent to us would be returned to you after digitization/scanning (at TG's cost). Currently, Tasveer Ghar does not provide the facility for the physical storage of the specimens. TG will also not provide the facility to “restore” the artworks.
Your project could be co-funded by another institution. You shall be responsible for acquiring any copyright permission required for the artwork.
What does the Tasveer Ghar fellowship provide you?
Although you can send us a detailed estimate of what your documentation would cost, we shall provide a maximum of Rs.60,000 (Indian Rupees sixty thousand) spread over a period of six months to each fellow. This amount would include the cost of your sending of the artwork to us for digitization. In case you wish to do the digitization/ scanning of images yourself, no extra funds would be available for that. Taxes as levied by the government of India would be applicable to the fellowship payment. We expect you to have a Indian PAN number and a bank account in order to receive the fellowship payment.
What the fellowship will not support?
We would not support any infrastructural costs such as setting up of an office, buying of equipment, daily meals, or per diem etc. TG is also not in a position of “purchasing” the antique art work from the collector. The fellowship will also not support the making of new artworks by an artist. Although we would be open to look at exceptional cases.
What we are currently not looking for are the strictly traditional art forms such as the folk arts, classical arts, or art with archaeological importance, unless any of these reflect the change or transformation brought about by modernity, urbanization and so on. In fact, your objective of the research need not be strictly the documentation or collection of a certain art form. It could even involve, say, contextualizing certain trends of popular aesthetics, such as “politics or economics of popular art”, or “aesthetics of election campaign”.
What should your proposal contain?
Although we encourage you to write your proposal in any manner that enables you to clearly state your objectives, here are a few guidelines that you may follow:
- Title of the project
- Short introduction (one paragraph)
- Background/Objectives/relevance (1-2 page)
- Activities/Timeline planned
- Requirements/estimated cost
- What has earlier been done on this artwork/subject? Provide a short survey of the available material (maybe a bibliography). How is your project unique?
- What makes you the best person to do this project?
- A summary of the proposal (max 300 words)
You may also provide the following with the proposal:
- Your curriculum vitae
- Sample of art work (photos, prints, video, text etc.) maximum 3 specimens(preferably, in the form of an email attachment - you may even direct us to a Internet site where such art specimens are on display).
- Names and addresses of two people in the field who know you
How to send the proposal?
You would need to send your proposal in Microsoft Word format by email to tasveerghar@gmail.com. If you need to send more than one attachments that are over 1MB in size, you may send them in separate emails, clearly giving a brief title of your proposal in the subject line. You may also provide a list of all the attachments, in the body of the email. If you need to send a specimen in hard copy, please ask us for the mailing address. After we receive your proposal, you will be given a reference number which you must quote for all correspondence related to your proposal.
Last date of submission of proposals: April 30, 2007
Announcement of the selected fellows/projects: May 31st, 2007
Commencement of fellowship: June 15th, 2007
Last date of submission of materials: December 15th, 2007
Inauguration of the virtual exhibit: January 1st, 2008
Back to the Call for Proposal ----- Download the Call for Proposals & FAQs in Word format |
