Workshop: Safety in the Arts, Creating your Practice

Safety in the Arts: Creating your Practice

A workshop on creating safe spaces for art under the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA) Festival – Past Forward: The Pleasure, Purpose and Practice of Arts Research at Bangalore International Center (BIC), October 25th to the 27th.

This immersive 2-hour workshop draws on multiple years of research into safety practices in the performing arts to offer a dynamic, participatory experience for arts practitioners, administrators, and enthusiasts. Through a series of interactive exercises, discussions, and theatre games, participants will explore innovative approaches to fostering a culture of safety that goes beyond rigid rules to become an integral, evolving part of organizational practice.

Participants will explore:

1. Reframing safety as an ongoing, adaptive process

2. Incorporating rituals to demarcate work boundaries

3. Integrating safety considerations into daily operations

4. Creating open channels for communication about safety concerns

5. Developing personalized codes of conduct

6. Applying improvisation techniques to enhance safety practices

   
   

Participants will leave with practical tools and strategies to implement in their own organizations, as well as a deeper understanding of the nuanced, collaborative nature of effective safety cultures in the arts.

Meet Your Facilitators

Varoon P. Anand is the Artistic Director of Kaivalya Plays, a professor, journalist, and researcher. Varoon is the recipient of awards, commissions and grants from the Instituto Cervantes, Goethe-Institut, British Council, Vanderbilt University, India Foundation for the Arts, Moleskine Foundation, EU's Horizon programme, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the Embassies of Spain, Argentina, Ecuador, Perú among others. Varoon pioneers innovative theatre projects, conducts research, and bridges cultural divides through his work in India and abroad.

Gaurav Singh Nijjer is a multifaceted theatre-maker, creative technologist, performer, and arts researcher. He is one-half of the Indian performing arts collective Kaivalya Plays and works with arts collective in India and abroad. A graduate of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and a former Chevening Scholar and German Chancellor Fellow, Gaurav’s work brings technology and media into live performance, blending his expertise in improvisation, multilingual performance, and artistic research.

Ankita Mathur is a Product Growth Manager at Houseware with a background in data science and economics. She contributed to the arts safety research project by designing the research framework, creating surveys, and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data. Ankita is also a passionate Kathak dancer, having trained under acclaimed artist Vidushi Saswati Sen at Kalashram, the school of Late Pt. Birju Maharaj.

About Arts Safety Research Project:

Kaivalya Plays, supported by the India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), is undertaking comprehensive research into safety practices in the performing arts in India. With detailed case studies, an all-access resource portal and a dedicated survey to capture a snapshot of the ecosystem, the research project seeks to enquire into the aspects of physical, mental and legal safety and well-being for individual practitioners like performers, directors, producers and other arts professionals, in their practice or as part of a larger collective, in India. The project advocates for safety as a continuous, highly personalized practice that is neither a one-size-fits all approach nor a set of rigid never-evolving rules, but something contextual and personalized to the needs of the individual practitioner or the group. 

You can see the research project and resource library on the website: www.arts-safety.org/