Team — Govandi Arts Festival

Homegrown and nurtured since 2022 by dreamers and an artist-architect-social worker trio - Natasha Sharma, Bhawna Jaimini and Parveen Shaikh from Community Design Agency, the team has now grown into a diverse bunch of artists, researchers, architects and community organisers working closely with the residents of Govandi.

Current Team

Festival Co-Founder, Creative Lead & Curator

Natasha Sharma is a Co-founder, Creative Lead & Curator at Govandi Arts Festival. At CDA, she works with communities living and working in neglected neighbourhoods to drive social and spatial improvements through the tools of community arts, placemaking and participatory research. She wants to create a space for both dialogue and celebration with different communities, practitioners and government authorities around the idea of home, identity, and inclusivity in city-making. Natasha is also an independent visual artist creating tactile and experiential works of varied scales and materials. Her diverse work has ranged from creating learning environments in metro stations of Bangalore to site-specific interventions in public spaces to replacing advertisement billboards with art in Germany.

In recent times, she won UNESCO's Going Together - For Youth Creativity and Wellbeing grant (2025) with the Govandi's youth group, the Arts4Resilience - Knowledge Into Use award (Sweden, 2023), Reclaim Art Award (Germany, 2021) and has been invited to Glastonbury Festival (UK) for their Diversity Artist programme. Her film Gutter Ki Machhli made it as a finalist for Best Indian ShortFilm in All Living Things Environmental Film Festival (ALT EFF) 2024.

Natasha Sharma

Festival Co-Founder, Community Lead & Organiser

Parveen Shaikh is the Co-founder, Community Lead & 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 was the former President of Navnirman Association, the federation body of Natwar Parekh Colony in Govandi.

At CDA, Parveen engages with government stakeholders, mobilizes the Govandi community, and works closely with women and youth to raise awareness on education, health, well-being, and social entitlements. She works to build consensus among the community to support the Arts Festival. Parveen has been shortlisted as a finalist for the 2025 Women Exemplar Award by CII Foundation, through which she is recognised for her work in youth education and empowerment.

Parveen Shaikh

Operations & Administration

Archana is an Admin Operations & Outreach person on CDA’s Neighborhood Regeneration Project in Govandi. She has previously worked with local NGOs, such as Myna Mahila Foundation as an Accounts & Admin person, Lead and Trainer on issues of menstrual hygiene and stigmatisation. Archana has facilitated deep awareness and engagement workshops with not only adolescent girls in schools and colleges, but also with young men to counter the stigma around menstruation. Through her work, she has helped several survivors of domestic violence and assisted them in resource mobilisation. At Govandi Arts Festival, Archana supports the team in administration activities, and works to organise community residents on workshops around arts and well-being.

Archana Jadhav

Junior Site Administrator

Sana is commerce student at Mumbai University and currently works as a Site Administrator at Under One Sky. Her role includes managing documentation and archiving, managing administrative activities and ensuring all spaces remain well equipped and maintained. Alongside this, she has been a Library Educator for over two years, where she continues to learn from the resilience and positivity of children. Her creative journey includes making a film in 2023 that was showcased across India and internationally, including New York. She is now a mentee at the Theatre mentorship program, exploring theatre to further develop her artistic expression.As a CDA team member and resident of Natwar Parekh Compound she is committed to Under One Sky’s vision of providing people with freedom of choice and opportunities to grow.

Sana Shaikh

Community Coordinator

Tayyaba is a final-year BMS student and has been working with CDA for the past five years. As a Community Coordinator, Tayyaba co-ordinates activities across three community spaces and hopes to create a sense of peace and belonging for the children of Natwar Parekh through them. She takes pride in knowing that such spaces of learning and growth are now accessible to the children of Govandi, a necessity she did not have growing up. She believes that resources like these will truly help nurture the creativity and talent of children from Govandi, and that is an opportunity to bring their talent to light. Her vision for these spaces is to have more young members from Govandi join in this shared endeavour, and that she and her team is able to garner more support from the larger community.

Tayyaba Darvesh

Visual Designer & Social Media Manager

Mugdha Shejale is an Exhibition Designer from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, currently working as a Visual Designer for the 2025 edition of Govandi Arts Festival. She is passionate about collaborating with diverse communities to create impactful experiences that amplify local voices and stories. This approach was evident during her participation in a two-week collaborative workshop with NID, SoA+D, ENSCI, and CMU in Ngao, Thailand, where she helped develop design strategies celebrating the town's rich heritage and cultural practices.

Driven by a belief that design can be a powerful tool for social change, Mugdha focuses on creating work that brings marginalized narratives to the forefront. Her multidisciplinary approach combines spatial design with storytelling, always informed by her love for learning new skills and techniques. Crochet serves as her personal tactile practice, connecting her to craft traditions and offering a meditative counterpoint to her digital design work.

Mugdha Shejale

Visual Designer

Madhav is a Mumbai-based illustrator and type designer. By practice, he has focused on identity design for brands and events, publication design, custom lettering, as well as self-published zines and comics — working with renowned individuals and organisations such as Hanumankind, Martin Garrix, Bhavya Ramesh, Absolut, JSW Foundation, Goethe-Institut, Optikal Asylum, Museum of Solutions, and AMNAP Records. Most of his illustration work is published under the pseudonym 'deadtheduck’, while undertaking custom font design, logo design, and lettering projects as 'okratype'. Alongside designing for music-adjacent projects like festivals, conferences, gig posters, album covers and merchandising, Madhav has conducted workshops around drawing, comix-making, and self-publishing.

Madhav Nair

Visual Designer

Pratik Bhide is an Illustrator and Graphic Designer based out of New Delhi. Since graduating from the MIT Institute of Design, Pune in 2021, his practice has spanned publication, editorial, social and brand spaces.

Seeking to create for culture in an empathetic, articulate and sensitive way, he believes strong narratives drive strong design. Through his work, he aims to engage with people and communities he has grown around and with.

Pratik has collaborated with spaces such as The Habitats Trust, Nature Morte, The Swaddle, The Paper Planes Agency, and Harper Collins, among others.

Pratik Bhide

Space Design & Production

Areen Attari is the creative force and co-founder behind Put Your Hands Together Bio-Architects. With over a decade of experience teaching at various Mumbai colleges, he has a passion for community-driven projects and natural building techniques. Areen is a master at blending artistry with architecture, infusing each design with his joyful energy, humility, and a deep love for the craft. Known for his hands-on approach, especially with bamboo, Areen turns every project into a collaborative adventure. His belief in making the most of life’s offerings is reflected in his work, and he inspires his team to embrace this philosophy. You'll often find Areen in the studio, listening to Portuguese music, sipping on coffee. When he isn't working, he's probably out on the football field, enjoying the game with the same enthusiasm he brings to his work.

Areen Attari

Space Design & Production

She is a Senior Architect at PYHT– Bio Architects, where she works across scales, from architecture to interiors. She holds a Master’s in Architecture Design from CEPT University, Ahmedabad, and a B.Arch. from ACOA, Mumbai University. Shivani began her professional journey at SSA Architects, working on premium high-rise towers, where she gained deep insight into large-scale systems, practical workflows, and multidisciplinary coordination. These experiences now inform her work at PYHT, enabling her to translate ambitious ideas into grounded realities. Inspired by the studio’s warm, collaborative culture, she values thoughtful exploration of materials, combining theory and making, prototyping, and testing. Architecture is a living craft that embraces change, enriches human experience, and transforms every detail into an opportunity for innovation, material discovery, and enduring value.

Shivani Sampat

Production Coordinator

Nishna Mehta has an MA in Theatre for Young Audiences. She has been working with and for children and young people from various backgrounds and abilities in India, Singapore, England, Ireland and Germany since 2012 in various creative and managerial roles. Currently, she is the Creative Consultant for the Performing Arts Programme at The Gateway School of Mumbai and recently served as the Program Manager for Theatre for Change, a transformational theatre project for at-risk youth. Her mantra for doing theatre is “Make it happen”. She wishes to share the magic and joy of theatre with young people that she experienced as a child. She aims to bring her local and international experiences together to find a 'glocal' identity.

Nishna Mehta

Community Facilitator

Sakina is a Community Facilitator at HumRaahi, and is currently pursuing a graduation in Mass Media and Advertising. Being highly versatile and creative, Sakina loves bringing into play her ideas for the children and space. She has also been assisting an expressive arts practitioner, facilitating a therapeutic experience for a closed group of children from the community. At HumRaahi, she enjoys working with children, and guiding them through fun and meaningful activities around collective growth and well-being. She is dedicated to teaching, and derives immense joy from her work. She also keeps an interest in sports, and is enrolled as a mentee at the Theatre mentorship program.

Sakina Khan

Community Facilitator

Muskan, who is currently pursuing a graduation in Chemistry Sciences works as a Community Facilitator at Awaaz, a space for women. She enjoys learning and working towards the growth of her own community. She takes immense pride in being a part of the Govandi Arts Festival, and supports in organising women participants from the community in sessions around textile design, crochet making, english speaking, and other well-being related workshops. She is also enrolled as a mentee at the Photography Mentorship program where she nurtures her creativity through photography, capturing moments and stories that inspire her. Muskan has a profound openness towards learning, is expressive of her thoughts and aims to build meaningful relationships at work.

Muskan Khan

Community Facilitator

Kulsum is a recent graduate in finance marketing, and holds a passion towards learning and nurturing her artistic ideas through several personal projects. At Kitaab Mahal, she puts her zeal to practice by curating meaningful library sessions for the children of Natwar Parekh. As a Community Facilitator at the library, she holds reading sessions for children and works to build an educational relationship with each of them. Beyond finance, Kulsum identifies as an artist at heart, and her work is certainly driven by creativity and self-expression. At the Govandi Arts Festival, she finds pathways to bring together her love for art, along with teaching. She is also a mentee at the Public Arts mentorship program, where she hopes to further hone her artistic skills.

Kulsum Sayyed