The initiation of B-CAF happened with the sudden demise of the renowned Patachitra artisan, Gurupada Chitrakar. We understood that even after being an internationally acclaimed artist, the pandemic didn’t spare him from stopping his earnings. His death worked as an eye-opener for us and we recognized the need for building leadership and entrepreneurship within the communities to make them self-sustainable.

B-CAF runs a unique Community Leadership Program to develop leaders in communities, it aims to provide decent work, foster innovation, and promote sustained and inclusive economic growth by Building Leadership and Entrepreneurship within the communities. The Community Leadership Program aims to engage with the community for the development of art practice and livelihood.

We understand that there are several communities that practice different art forms. Without a proper cultural mapping, it is difficult to identify communities that are unrecognized. Often, the lack of transportation for being in a remote space does not allow a community to be reachable. Hence, on one side, some communities are getting benefits from different resources regularly and they are growing and sustaining themselves. On the other side, some of them, despite having a rich culture of heritage tradition of art practice in their livelihood, are not getting the exposure. The continuous lack of resources is moving them away from their art practices as they are choosing different occupations for earnings. There is lack of interest in their next generations to be in the same art practices as there is a huge uncertainty of financial earnings and livelihood. As a result, some of the traditional forms are dying slowly and some of them are on the verge of getting obsolete.

We, under the Community Leadership Program, aim to identify those communities of artisans and work with them. The program has been designed to build leadership and entrepreneurship within communities.

From the field visits to communities, we understood that skill development is essential to increase markets for their product. Interventions such as design upskilling is necessary to bring innovation in design to make their artworks relevant to contemporary buyers. In most traditional art practices, artisans follow some regular subjects and styles, but it is also necessary to innovate ideas and incorporate new avenues within the forms so that the form can be relevant. It is also necessary to bring them back to their roots of using organic materials from where they are moving away as per the market demand. Because using non- organic materials is easier, sometimes due to the lack of monetary support and resources, the artisans choose to do so. CLP also provides knowledge on marketing and selling so that they can make a sustainable ecosystem for themselves. The design and other capacity-building interventions foster innovation and promote sustained and inclusive Economic growth in line with SGD Goal 8.

The Community Leadership Program focuses on bringing out leadership qualities within the community so that the community can grow within itself. Hence, the program provides fellowships to the potential artisans who have leadership qualities so that the learning can be brought back to the communities’ growth and development. The fellowship program includes eminent scholars and artists who bring their knowledge and skills to the learning space.

However, the design of the program is careful not to de-root the artisans from their practices but uplift their skills and techniques. We, as a team, also understand the necessity of having knowledge of the ethics of ethnographic work and engaging with the communities. It is paramount that an organization also focuses on understanding the ethics to engage with the community in their practice. As there is a struggle with the boundaries and roles of the researcher and the organisation while engaging with the community. Hence, we have engaged with scholars and practitioners through talk series who have experience of working with communities to discuss how to create a sustainable non-hierarchical space for the program. Our aim is to create a safe space for the artisans and for the art forms.