Jun 27, 20202 min read

Nasir Engineer on Branding for Self, Teams and Communities

As part of our Theatre Management Fellowship, we invited theatre practitioners, arts managers and guest speakers from cultural institutions to speak to our Fellows about a wide variety of topics.

For the inaugural session, we decided to start with the topic of marketing and branding in the arts. And who better to kickstart the series than Nasir Engineer (Actor, Improviser, Graphic Designer) with a talk on "Branding – Personal, Teams & Communities" 😀

Sharing his artistic and professional journey, Nasir touched upon a wide variety of topics and questions by our Fellows. Some of our main takeaways included:

😎 Personal Branding

Create a language for your branding that is honest and self-aware, it will inform what you post online.

📅 Running Festivals

Start early with the planning, funding, logistics – Make sure to think about inclusivity!

👫Team-Building

Build communities over shared goals, make sure to create opportunities for bonding outside of work, and do stress on leaders having an open mind (and keeping their egos in check!)

Thank you Nasir for this wonderful session, we can't wait to have you over again! 👋

More Information about Nasir

Nasir Engineer is the co-founder and former Artistic Director of Improv Comedy Bangalore. He is also the founder and festival director of the Bengaluru Improv Festival, India's first and only Improv festival. Nasir has been performing, training and directing Improv since 2010. In 2015, Nasir was part of the team that brought India its first improvised musical show on Christmas Eve. He has also been instrumental in organizing India's first 12 hour Improvathon held in Bangalore in April 2019. On the corporate front, Nasir has trained and performed for several brands namely Google, Uber, Decathlon, Sony, Globus Travels, Philips, TE Connectivity etc. Apart from Improv, Nasir is also a storyteller. He has had held several live performances with Tall Tales Storytelling (Mumbai) and one of his stories features in the 'Best of the Tall Tales' storytelling book published in 2019. Nasir is also a professional graphic designer, an ultra-marathon runner and also a BRM endurance long-distance cyclist. Learn more about his work on his website.

About The Theatre Management Fellowship

The Theatre Management Fellowship by Kaivalya Plays is a first-of-its-kind training initiative focused on strategic management and creative administration in the field of theatre. In July 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown, the first cohort of the Fellowship was conducted completely online. The Theatre Management Fellowship received more than 90 applications, out of which 5 candidates from 5 different cities were selected. Over 12 weeks the 5 Fellows were trained in marketing, grant writing, fund-raising, archiving and worked from start to finish on four digital productions and several applied improvisation workshops. Over 72 days of the Fellowship, the group created over 100 documents and resources, held fifteen sessions focused solely on technology for theatre (including creating trackers, youtube channels, email campaign tools, using WIX to design your own website), invited thirteen speakers to speak on topics including curation, financial management and planning, legal resources and applied work for corporate clients. The speakers included Amitesh Grover, Yuki Ellias, Atul Kumar, Atul Satya Koushik, Vivek Rao from QTP, Shiva Pathak and Nimi Ravindran from the Sandbox Collective, and Menaka Rodriguez and Spandana Bhowmick from the India Foundation for the Arts.