Who We Are & What We Do

An open-source, community-led platform that democratises access to arts education and training in India.

The Indian Arts Education Forum seeks to bring together information, resources and networks around arts education in one single place. Students can find up-to-date information about artistic courses, training and programs across artforms, locations, duration and commitment as well as a place to interact with arts professionals, course alumni, arts foundations and more for knowledge exchange, capacity building and collaborative approaches. Additionally, institutions and organisations offering training (both formal and informal) programs will be able to manage their institutional pages and publish updates as well as engage potential students through the platform. Foundations and arts institutions can also leverage this platform to administer scholarships and student support programs in their arts portfolios.

The Problem

Training in the arts is at a nascent stage in India, needing greater awareness and accessibility for students considering a career in the arts as well as arts professionals looking to upskill. Additionally, there is a larger need to communicate the value behind education in the arts. Presently, the choices and opportunities available to a young person considering a career in the arts are influenced heavily by whether or not they have a history of arts in the family or access to art professionals they can reach out to. This allows a certain section of the population to pursue arts training whilst denying access to those who do not have these informal support networks. This further lends to a culture of gate-keeping, wherein information remains with those who are privy to it.

Our Process

The open-source approach relies on the values of decentralized production models (as seen in the case of software) to solve problems in specific communities and industries. Similarly, the platform aims to increase access to artistic training and careers by collating, digitizing and organizing scattered information in one single place. By bringing students, professionals, institutions and funders together, we endeavour to create a meeting ground of different voices and interests that ultimately benefit the Indian arts community. Given the platform's reliance on this community (For instance, students or arts professionals can add details about a missing course and add ratings/reviews about the ones they've taken), there is an element of trust and visibility being built.

Given the platform will bring together information that is already in the public domain (for eg. information listed on the institutions’ websites) as well as crowd-sourced information (reviews, ratings, forum threads), we will work with a flexible attribution model and use creative commons licensing wherever and whenever possible. The platform will also have straightforward terms and references policy that defines our responsibilities and limits our liabilities.