Hello from the City of Joy! Meet our new team member Ankita.

Earlier this year, we put out an open call for a Communications Consultant to join the Kaivalya Plays team to help us expand our outreach efforts to the various communities we are a part of. After meeting some wonderful folks doing exciting work in arts communications, we are pleased to welcome Ankita Ghosh to the team!

Ankita joins us remotely from the City of Joy in east India, ie Kolkata, where she lives with her family. She is currently completing an M.A. in Media and Cultural Studies at Tata Institute of Social Studies in Mumbai. Among other things, Ankita is passionate about expanding awareness about the arts and runs a dedicated monthly newsletter capturing the visual arts landscape in the country. (Go on, subscribe to it here!)

We asked Ankita to answer a few questions to introduce herself to the Kaivalya Plays community in her own words. Here's what she says about the arts, her life and everything in between.

Q. Where are you in life right now? (Answer this in whatever way you’d like to!) Ankita: Professionally, in a transitioning phase from studying full-time and working part-time to finding full-time work opportunities at the end of the semester this year. Personally, on a journey to living mindfully, consciously in a world that’s becoming too fast-paced. Q. How did you get started in the arts? Do you remember the first artistic experience you witnessed? Ankita: I interned for quite some time at Sahapedia, & I was lucky to be there while they were launching a new project called ‘My City My Heritage’. This really pushed me in every possible way, but it was also the best learning experience for me to begin taking up independent opportunities with confidence. Art, for me, is entwined in everyday experiences. So it’s quite difficult to think of a “first” artistic experience as such. But I will put down a piece of work that I have not been able to forget, in the hopes someone else finds their way to the beautiful piece of art that is Naeem Mohaiemen’s ‘Jole Dobe Na’, the trailer for which can be found here. Q. What excites you the most about working in the arts? What’s also daunting about the same? The lack of a playbook or a template that must be adhered to seems exciting. The arts encourage creative thinking and new ideas the way other industries might not be open to. But while this offers immense scope for new ideas to take shape, it also means problems can crop up because of the lack of it as well. Q. What are you looking forward to in your new role with Kaivalya Plays? Lots of learning, some improv games and many fun anecdotes from Varoon & Gaurav. Q. Is there anything else you’d like to share with someone reading this blog? Go check out street-artist JR’s recent work in Lviv, Ukraine, where he mobilized locals in the city square for unfolding his work that brings into conversation the fate of children affected by war. This is the latest cover for TIME magazine and here’s an article that delves deeper into the lives of the people at the centre of this project: https://time.com/6158007/ukraine-resilience-time-cover/

We are very excited to welcome Ankita to the team and look forward to discovering, sharing and talking about art with her. You can get in touch with her on ankita@kaivalyaplays.org or connect on LinkedIn.

P.S. We also got a chance to meet her in the flesh in Kolkata, when myself and our artistic director Varoon P. Anand attended the ArtThink South Asia Short Course at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC). More to follow soon on this thread!