Advisors
Sitara Chowfla is a creative consultant with experience working in curatorial, arts strategy & management, editorial, and brand communication roles. Recent positions include curator at Khoj International Arts Association (2013-2017), Guest Program Curator at India Art Fair (2019) and curator at Pulp Society (2019-20), and Editor and Head of Communications at Good Earth (2020-2021). Sitara contributes to the cultural sector in India in myriad ways. In 2020, she co-founded Goa Open Arts, which is a platform to support the growing creative community of Goa through public programs, community projects, artist grants and exhibitions. She is also an advisor to the Re-Frame Institute of Art and Expression, and to the Govandi Art Festival 2023. Sitara currently works as a project consultant with the Art-X Company in Mumbai, developing projects for capacity building and strategic management of the cultural sector in India. Sitara holds an MA in Curating from the Royal College of Art, and a BA in Art History from Bryn Mawr College.
Sitara Chowfla
Jyotsna Siddharth (She/They) is an actor, artist, activist and writer. Jyotsna’s practice spreads across institutional building, intersectionality, arts, activism, theatre and development. As an artist and actor, they work closely with several organisations, social art spaces and collectives to push boundaries of individual and societal comforts and criticality, to deepen nuances, compassion and empathy.
Jyotsna has co-founded social art project- Sive (2017), Founded Project Anti Caste Love (2018), Dalit Feminism Archive (2019) and co- organized the first Indian adaptation of ‘A Rapist in Your Way’- the Chilean feminist collective Las Tesis in 2019, Delhi. They have a master’s in Development Studies from TISS Mumbai and Social Anthropology from School of Oriental and African Studies, London and a recipient of Chevening Scholarship, British High Commission (2014). In 2020, Jyotsna was featured as 40 under 40 by Edex and New Indian Express. They are on advisory board of Feminism in India, The Rights Collective UK, Giving Tuesdays and CPA Project.
Jyotsna Siddharth
Sushma Iyengar is a social worker. She founded Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan, the well-known women’s collective in the late eighties. During the past three decades, she has founded and led organizations in the area of gender justice, indigenous cultures, traditional livelihoods, local governance, and post disaster rehabilitation. She is associated with many civil society organizations in India as a mentor and educator and is the president of Khamir, a platform for craft artisans which works with the eco systems of their crafts, and an adjunct professor with the Centre for Heritage Management, Ahmedabad University. Her publications include Picture This! Painting the Women’s Movement(University of Chicago, 2013). She is the lead curator of the exhibition ‘Living Lightly – Journeys with Pastoralists’ – an outcome of her longstanding interest and experience with indigenous communities, including nomadic pastoralists.
Sushma Iyengar
Parveen Shaikh is a social worker and community organiser with over 20 years of experience in advocacy work for the rights of slum and pavement dwellers. A powerful public speaker, she has championed the cause of safe formal housing for vulnerable communities at multiple national and international forums as a former member of the National Slum Dwellers Federation. She helped set up the Myna Mahila Foundation in 2015, which works on issues of menstrual health in underserved communities, and is currently the President of Navnirman Association, the federation body of Natwar Parekh Colony. Passionate about the rights of women from Muslim and minority communities, she continues to support the women and young girls of her neighbourhood through her work at Community Design Agency and beyond.
Parveen Shaikh
Architect Sandhya Naidu Janardhan is the Founder and Managing Director of Community Design Agency, headquartered in Mumbai, India. Started in 2016, this organisation of architects, engineers, artists, designers, community advocates, and business professionals work together in communities at the economic bottom, addressing cultural and societal inequalities through the built environment. Sandhya and her team’s recent projects include building a safe workplace for sex workers, a slum redevelopment project to house 1,400 people, an e-waste project to reimagine place of business, and a spatial and infrastructure improvement project in a public housing neighbourhood in Mumbai. Licensed and educated in India, Sandhya is also a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and a TEDIndia Fellow. Her previous work spans multiple countries, in both the commercial and not-for-profit sectors - including landscape architecture and design for a Singapore-based interdisciplinary design firm, and post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti for a US Based non-profit.
Sandhya Naidu Janardhan