Friends,

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we’re rescheduling today’s TGP Sessions.

We’ll come back on 8th May with a Goa Spotlight, and then, on 22nd May, we have an in-person event — all fates permitting — in Bangalore, so those of you who are there or who plan to be, do mark the date in your calendars. More on on that in a bit.

See you on the 8th!

Lina is an independent art historian and curator with two decades of experience in arts management. She has worked on projects that highlighted plural, multi-layered approaches, with a focus on inclusivity and collaboration in public arts engagement. It has resulted in interconnected bodies of research and curation that bring together diverse voices, modes of expression, and interfaces for dialogue. The focus areas of her research extend to arts education, printmaking history and practice, the documentation of living traditions and folk arts in India, and environmental consciousness in the arts. Her current practice foregrounds sustained engagement with material culture and social history, seen through acts of community interaction, pedagogical interventions; archiving and interpretation.

Gurpreet has established and managed the very successful store People Tree in Delhi and Goa. The store supports fair trade in the crafts and provides a retail platform to many creative practitioners. She is one of the core team of Goa Open Arts.

We start in a few minutes. Come join us.

Dear TGPians who are also Bangalore residents or who might happen to be visiting the city on 22nd May,

We are hosting an in-person session in WeWork Galaxy, Residency Road (Room 5H) (location: https://goo.gl/maps/46WoB8huTtX9ATLd9) on the 22nd May from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

The theme is the history and traditions, the art and culture of Bangalore. We will have up to three speakers (names and topics out soon) with time for Q&A, and, of course, time for informal chat and the off-stage conversations that are an intrinsic part of TGP.

The venue can host up to 20 people and it is mandatory for us to provide a guest list in advance, so if you would like to attend, please let us know here: https://forms.gle/GX39zFefQYWMaYhCA

The venue: Room 5H, WeWork Galaxy, Residency Road https://goo.gl/maps/46WoB8huTtX9ATLd9
We can host up to 20 people comfortably, and it is mandatory for us to provide a guest list in advance, so if you would like to attend, please let us know here: https://forms.gle/GX39zFefQYWMaYhCA (First come, first served. Please don’t block a seat if you are unsure. If you have registered and need to cancel, please message Alok P Kumar at +91-95600-65577.)

We are not leaving out our non-Bangalore friends. As with all the TGP Sessions, we will be on Zoom, and you can register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMrfuisqTMpHdfsrdBIR_X3KhIAVbny8GoJ

Meet our presenters:

Suresh Jayaram is an artist, art historian, arts administrator and curator from Bangalore. He is the founder and director of Visual Art Collective / 1 Shanthiroad Studio, an international artists’ residency and alternative art space. He is currently involved in art practice, urban mapping, archiving, curation and arts education. His keen interest in environmental and urban developmental issues influences his work. He taught art history at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath’s College of Fine Arts.

Thejaswi Udupa is a technologist by profession, but spends an inordinate amount of time indulging in his other passions: quizzing, reading, and occasionally writing and talking about his interests. He has been published in leading newspapers and magazines including The Hindu, Deccan Herald, Times of India, India Today, Business Line, and Business Standard.

When not reluctantly explaining what she does for a living to curious people, Lekha Naidu is either facilitating a class for young theatre enthusiasts or rigging lights or translating plays and other pieces of literature from English to Kannada and vice versa, or planning photo shoots while finding ways to get on stage and perform. Some affectionately call her the Girl Friday of the Arts community — conveniently forgetting about the other days of the week — while she often refers to herself as a theatre practitioner. She has made no significant contribution to the world, yet; but she keeps trying. She now utilises all her skills at the city’s newest community space, Bangalore International Centre.

Small change. The room atWeWork has been changed. It is now Room 6G. All else stays the same.

Folks joining us online, we are about to start.
Bangalore folks already in the room, hello!

Several messages coming up, but first things first.

We are taking a small break from TGP Sessions, so there will not be an event this Sunday.

Second.

One of the things we’re taking time to figure out is whether we need to take another look at our ‘tracks,’ as we call the broad headings under which TGP Sessions are organised. We’d like your opinion on this.

Please go here — https://forms.gle/cxfdYKdHVXoRD7Kd8 — and tell us which tracks you like. This should take you not more than a minute or two.

(And we’re also looking for people to help curate these tracks. If you’re interested, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/E8eReuiK95SVJikc6 )

Third.

We have been listening to feedback from people who have missed Sessions despite intending to be there. The most-heard refrain: I saw the email / invitation / message / social media post but I forgot. Second most common: I didn’t see the email / invitation / message / social media post. With some, it’s because they don’t look at email that often these days. Some of you in our Telegram group say you get overloaded there too. And with our social media posts — and our event pages within the Facebook group to which we diligently invite everyone who are members — algorithms conspire and most people seem to miss them.

So, may we make a suggestion? We send you a calendar invitation, which you can add to your calendar, and send you a reminder before the event.

To sign up for calendar invitations, please write to thetgpsessions@gmail.com — put ‘invite me’ in the subject line — and we’ll add you.

Fourth.

We recently had our first hybrid event since the beginning of the pandemic, an in-person TGP Sessions in Bangalore (which members not in the city could also witness and participate in via Zoom). We plan to have more of these, but we learnt that we do need more people to help organise these things: a minimum of two of TGP’s curating team and at least two others to help with logistics. We are looking for folks in Goa, Bangalore and Bombay right away, and gradually we hope to include more places, provided we have a critical mass of people in them.

This is volunteering that will not take up much of your time. We’ll need you physically present on the day, possibly one other day on which there will be a tech rehearsal and dry run, and a meeting or two on the phone or via Google Meet.

If you would like to volunteer in your city, please write to thetgpsessions@gmail.com with ‘Volunteering for [your city name]’ in the subject line and your contact details.

If you can provide us with a venue at low or no cost for these in-person meets, something that could accommodate at least 20 people, has wifi, microphone(s) and speakers, a projector and screen — basically the kind of place that could host a hybrid meeting — please write to thetgpsessions@gmail.com with ‘Venue in [your city name]’ in the subject line and your contact details.

If you don’t have the time to volunteer but you’d like to attend these in-person sessions, write to thetgpsessions@gmail.com with ‘Interested in TGP Sessions in [place name]’ as the subject line.

Fifth (and last, for now).

We are planning to have some sessions which will be different from what we have been doing the last two years. These will be in-person events that do not adapt well to an online format — for example, nature and heritage walks, guided tours of museums and galleries — and so will be only for people in particular locations. As far as we can see, we do have sufficient numbers of people in Bangalore, Bombay, and of course Goa, so we’ll start with those first. We’re calling these TGP Communities,

This is volunteering that will not take up much of your time. These events will be, at most, once a month, on a weekend. We’ll need you to physically present on the day, of course, and for a meeting or two on the phone or via Google Meet.

If you would like to volunteer to organise these in your city, please write to thetgpsessions@gmail.com with ‘Volunteering for TGP communities in [your city name]’ in the subject line and your contact details. If you have suggestions for these local community events, do include them in your email.

If you don’t have the time to volunteer but you’d like to attend these in-person sessions, write to thetgpsessions@gmail.com with ‘Interested in TGP Communities in [place name]’ as the subject line.