Documentation and archiving the performing arts
Issues of Intellectual Property Rights and Intangible Cultural Heritage

Adishakti is a performance company engaged in the research and reanimation of traditional knowledges in theatre, dance, music, movement, puppet and craft forms -- with a view to creating a contemporary hybrid aesthetic and performance language. Committed to the cause of cultural and creative alterity along with ample research experience in performance techniques, Adishakti has evolved a pedagogical system of performance training, which a large number of performers from elsewhere seek to avail of. Apart from hosting workshops by other organisations, Adishakti also offers its space to artists from all parts of the world to come to live on its campus either to do their own work or to train with Adishakti.

Webiste: http://www.adishaktitheatrearts.org

The Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology (ARCE) was established in 1982 by the American Institute of Indian Studies with the aim of developing a centralized archive of collections of music and the performing arts and to stimulate the study of ethnomusicology in India. A major objective or establishing the ARCE was that collections of Indian music and other oral traditions are scattered throughout the world in personal and institutional collections and are not accessible in India.

Today ARCE has an archive of 25,000 hours of audiovisual recordings of the music and performance traditions of India and with a supporting library and facilities for reference and research. At the core of the archives are field recording collections deposited voluntarily by scholars and collectors. The collections are supplemented with detailed documentation.

The ARCE boasts of state of the art equipment and climate controlled vaults. The library of 10,000 books has books, journals, offprints and newspaper cuttings relevant to the study of ethnomusicology in India. The archives and library are accessible to researchers and interested individuals and institutions.

Website: http://www.indiastudies.org/

Established in 1992, the Attakkalari Public Charitable Trust of Contemporary Performing Arts (Attakkalari) is a non-profit organization, whose mission is directed towards a broad range of activities in the performing arts arena. It is the only umbrella organization of its kind in India, creating a context for contemporary movement arts through many distinct but interlinked programmes such as Education and Outreach including a Diploma in Movement Arts & Mixed Media, National and International Platforms for exchange and performance including the Attakkalari India Biennial – Festival of Contemporary Movement Arts, Strategic Movement and Digital Arts Development, Research and Documentation and new performance works by the Attakkalari Repertory.

Website: http://www.attakkalari.org

The Group has emerged as the only platform for pooling the creative energies of denotified communities, studying their traditional cultural practices and documenting and disseminating this information amongst wider society to bridge social differences and bring about attitudinal changes. Through their plays, Budhan Theatre is working to remove the criminal stigma attached to their community.  "Chharas are 'Born Actors' not 'Born Criminals'!" they declare. Budhan Theatre fosters dialogue between a stigmatized community and the rest of world. They aim to sensitize society to the issues of social and legal injustice which plague their community. It also works to promote community development. Together with their parent organization, the Bhasha Research and Publication center, Budhan Theatre is involved in sponsoring educational scholarships for girls, and runs a community library and informal school

Website: http://www.bhasharesearch.org.in/Site.html

CCRD (Centre For Cultural Research And Documentation) engages itself mainly with the task of documenting the histories, oral traditions and indigenous knowledge systems of Arunachal Pradesh in the light of globalized change and modernization in the last few years. Through their involved in the audio-visual documentation of folklore in Arunachal, CCRD has been able to earn for itself a reputation for its research-intensive media and documentation work. With their well founded resources, CCRD aspires to disseminate information on Arunachal Pradesh to exchange and address contemporary issues of identity and change.

Website: http://www.ccrd.in

CMAC works in the field of art, design and culture. Its role has been to create an interface between artists from different genres, to facilitate and to provide a platform for production, cultural exchange of art and ideas, and dialogue in the visual and performing arts. Over nearly a decade the organization has developed projects and campaigns through different art practices such as new media design, performance, video, public and community based art and dialogue, sound and other experimental modes of cultural production.

Website: http://cmaconline.org/cmac

Desire Machine Collective is a media collective based in the Northeast of India. It has initiated  an artists led alternative art space located on a ferry on the river Brahamaputra in Assam.

The goals of the collective are:

• to facilitate in establishing new relationships, promoting the exchange of experiences and will stimulates new encounters between cultural and political players from different communities in the region.
• the collective aims at making the ferry an archive and carrier of folk and oral traditions, poetry, people’s experiences and new forms that emerge with a multidisciplinary approach to cultural production. To act as a reservoir of information about forms of social practices that lack systematic accounts. 
• The collective aims at the creation of a public domain and public access to the cultural forms. In creating, documenting, protecting and disseminating the expressive culture of communities we believe that we contribute to the reaffirmation of local cultures in a globalizing world. 
• By using an approach that keeps the needs and concerns of the community at the center the project aims at the empowerment of the community.
• In the rhetoric of insurgency and counter-insurgency public opinion of the civil society has been lost. Where any dissent against the government is seen as a pro militants/insurgents statement. The ferry acts as a space for reclaiming the public space giving the formation of public opinion utmost importance. 
• The projects aims at constructing a network of participants that share the idea of a socially responsible transformation and dialogue in the context of Assam and to encourage active, regular participation by the communities for the collection and dissemination of the archive.

Magic Lantern Foundation (MLF) came into being in 1989 as a media action group with the objective of using communication tools to advance human rights and give voice to the problems and concerns of marginalised people. In the process, we realised the growing importance of the audio visual medium, video in particular, in both informing as well as initiating debates and discussions on social issues. We aim to expand the reach and the possibilities for independent films through creating more avenues for production, advocacy, distribution and exhibition of independent films in India and abroad.

Website: http://www.magiclanternfoundation.org

NCPA’s mission has been to provide leadership on a national level as India’s premier performing arts centre, through the presentation of Indian and International art forms, the promotion of excellence and the preservation of India’s rich cultural heritage.  The ample spaces and state-of-the-art facilities at NCPA enable an eclectic mix of activities, which have something for everyone.
Be it modern art, sculpture or photography, exhibitions are a regular feature at the NCPA. So are performances by national and international artists. Festivals of dance, drama, music and cinema are also a big draw. To foster a better understanding of the arts, regular workshops and seminars are held in association with several cultural, semi governmental and governmental organizations.
One of the more dynamic activities of the NCPA is the Chauraha, an inter-disciplinary forum where creative minds meet and interact with each other and their audiences. It also enables them to present their work in an informal environment.

In continuation of the ancient Guru-Shishya tradition, the N.C.P.A. initiated master classes where maestros of India classical music and dance train young aspiring artistes and students, passing on their skills and their passion to the younger generation.

Website: http://www.ncpamumbai.com

National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC) is a non-governmental, non-profit organisation, registered in Chennai dedicated to the promotion of Indian folklore research, education, training, networking, and publications. The aim of the Centre is to integrate scholarship with activism, aesthetic appreciation with community development, comparative folklore studies with cultural diversities and identities, dissemination of information with multi-disciplinary dialogues, folklore fieldwork with developmental issues and folklore advocacy with public programming events. Folklore is a tradition based on any expressive behaviour that brings a group together, creates a convention and commits it to cultural memory. NFSC aims to achieve its goals through cooperative and experimental activities at various levels. NFSC is supported by grants from the Ford Foundation and the Tata Education Trust.

Website: http://www.indianfolklore.org

PUKAR is an innovative and experimental initiative that aims to contribute to a global debate about urbanisation and globalization.

Website: http://www.pukar.org.in

Regional Resources Centre for Folk Performing Arts was built with the help of the grants  offered by the Ford Foundation. The saga of the RRC marks the culmination of international recognition that this pioneering  institution of learning acquired. The origin of this recognition was by way of an invitation extended to Prof.K.S.Haridasa Bhat in 1962-63 to attend a 6 month course in ISVE, Italy. The invitation from the ICCR to visit foreign countries like Hong Kong leading the Folk Dance troupes was the beginning of a series of foreign trips.

The Centre has produced rich documentation material in audio visual form based on a series of field studies, workshops, seminars and festivals. Taking up the most modern methods  of multimedia documentation the RRC has become a great treasure of Folklore material . Photographs , Cassettes, Videos, slides analyzed, classified and stored for easy retrieval can be consulted on the spot by interested people. Siri Sampada, which contains valuable archival materials. The Dissemination Project of presenting  RRC holdings before interested audiences in the Dhwanyaloka is one of the most important parts of the informal education which the college has taken up with gusto and vigor.

Rupayan was established in 1960 by founder director padma bhushan Late Komal Kothari (ethnomusicologist and folklorist) and his friend padma shree Vijaydan Detha (folk stpry teller and a writer) with the simple idea of collecting folk tales and folk songs to bring out the richness of the Rajasthani language, which is the mother tongue of more than 40 million people of Rajasthan.

But it was found that the problem of language covered the whole ways of life of people and our goal became larger than collecting tales and songs. The institute further expanded its archival and research work in many fields like folk musical instruments, forms of folk ballads, folk epics of long lays, folk gods and goddesses, rural food, nomads and pastoral ways of life, ethno-graphic and finally got involved in looking into ethno-mind- what are the traditional ways in which one generation passes its knowledge and skills to the next generation where the practice is to “learn but not to teach” in any structured way.

The Social Science Baha was set up in January 2002 to foster and facilitate the development of the study of the social sciences in Nepal. In keeping with its stated objective, the Baha has focused mainly in the following four activities: running a social science library, conducting short-term course on the social sciences, hosting lectures, discussions, etc, and research, including digital archiving.

Website: http://www.soscbaha.org

TempoStand is a platform that promotes independent bands and solo artists. It is not specific to any genre. Hindustani, Sufi, Folk, Rock, Jazz, Punk, Carnatic, Blues and all other genres are invited.
We are India’s premier source of CC licensed indie music.

Website: http://www.tempostand.com

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) focuses on the physical, social, cultural and economic revitalisation of communities in the Muslim world. It includes the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme, the Music Initiative in Central Asia, the on-line resource ArchNet and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The purpose of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture is the improvement of built environments in societies where Muslims have a significant presence.

Website: http://www.akdn.org/aktc

The Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute (GBPSSI) was established in 1980 under the joint auspices of the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and the Government of Uttar Pradesh. It is devoted to carrying out research in social and management sciences, particularly in the field of socio-economic development, culture and public policy. It also provides training, guidance and consultancy to government organization and various institutions working in the field of development. The GBPSSI is a constituent institute of the University of Allahabad.

Website: http://www.gbpssi.nic.in/

The Society for Labour and Development was founded in 2006. The SLD believes that a democratic and just society can only be built through economic development and equitable sharing of the gains of development; through institutionalizing the democratic rights of workers' and marginalized peoples' organizations in sites of production and governance; through international solidarity based on mutual respect and equality; and through a democratization of global economic and political regimes.

The SLD engages in its work through collaboration and coalition-building, with a focus on the rights of workers and marginalised people. Based in India, it works at the grassroots and believes in an Asian framework for engaging internationally.

‘Mazdoor Ekta Manch’ (MEM) is a platform of workers in Gurgaon. MEM's mission is to build the power of workers and their families, and secure their dignity and rights where they work and live.
‘Rhythm & Renewal’ is a project aimed at addressing the gaps in cultural as well as activist social movements, specifically among migrant workers in the NCR region. The project will intervene among migrants between their home towns and NCR – the goal being re-establishment of their cultural selves and also revival and re-interpretation of folk performing arts in the new context in which the communities find themselves.

Website: http://www.sld-india.org