Muragacha was once a puppetry hub. Renowned art director and the pioneer of modern puppetry in Bengal, Raghunath Goswami, during a visit to Muragacha in the early 1970s, had said that the village was home to the largest colony of puppeteers in the world. There were fifty-five families practicing puppetry as a livelihood at the time; the figure is just twelve today. String puppetry, rod puppetry, and hand puppetry have a long history in Bengal. Their styles and puppets are different. String puppets weigh less and are moved with thin strings. They are made with cloth, papier-mâché, and sholapith. Their height, at the most, is two feet. The stage for a show must be ten feet long, six feet wide, and three feet high, with three sides covered. The puppeteer teams are like families. Everything, right from the script to lights, costumes, and sets are done in clockwork precision.

Chau, a form of folk dance, is an energetic and vibrant art form which finds its roots in martial arts. Popularly, there are three types of the Chau dance known among the indigenous people of Chotonagpur Plateau region. While the Seraikella Chau is popular in Jharkhand and Mayurbhanj Chau in Odisha, the Purulia Chau is popular in the western plateau regions of West Bengal. In 2010, Chau dance was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The dance is believed to date back to over a century, though the specifics of its origin cannot be definitely ascertained. The Purulia Chau dance comprises of rhythmic drum beatings, powerful acrobatic movements, and somersaults.\nMs. Mousumi Choudhury, Chau dancer, is the first female chau dancer of Purulia. Her father is a renowned Chau dancer- Ustad Jagannath Choudhury.

The Kurava community migrated from Tamil Nadu and settled along the banks of the Nila River where they followed mat weaving traditions for many generations. Unfortunately, because of low financial returns and scarce raw materials, the community to lost interest in traditional weaving, leaving only one practitioner, Mr. U. Chami, who took the tradition forward for many years through the Killimangalam Weaving Cooperative Society. However, due to ill health at the age of 72, Chami left weaving behind. But before retiring, he taught traditional weaving skills to a non-native Kurava—Mrs. P. Prabhavathi. Today, Prabhavathi still holds Chami in high regard for his initiatives to train interested people, even those from outside the community. This willingness to train others laid foundation for the craft’s survival. For his efforts, Chami was recognized with the Master Craftsman Award by the Textile Ministry of India in 1992.

Manipuri Theatre, established in 1996 at a remote village of Ghoramara in Kamalganj Upazila of the Moulvibazar district of Bangladesh, has become an example of theatre excellence. The main objective of the organization revolves around safeguarding Manipuri culture and to showcase the ICH traditions of the Manipuri community to a wider audience. Over the last twenty years, the organization has made a mark in theatre, producing around thirty plays. The journey of Manipuri Theatre is quite inspiring. In the past two decades, it has been able to attract theatre goers, create a village-based theatre studio, and present some excellent productions. Their work has been acclaimed for being instrumental in social inclusion of the marginalized Bishnupriya Manipuris and in the fight against extremism in society. The organization has also successfully connected to the Bishupriya Manipuris living in Manipur and other northeastern states of India through regular cultural exchanges.

Dr. Madhura Dutta is Director at banglanatak dot com (www.banglanatak.com), a 20 years old UN accredited social enterprise working towards inclusive and sustainable development using culture-based approaches. She leads international collaboration and research initiatives. She has 19 years of global work experience including UNESCO (as National Programme Officer), All India Artisans & Craftworkers Association (as Executive Director), and as advisor for CSRs. She has extensive experience in programme design, development and management, and policy research and advocacy, focusing on Culture and Development issues. She has a PhD from the School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), and MA degrees in Sustainable Development under a Commonwealth Scholarship (Staffordshire University, UK) and Sociology (Calcutta University). She is also a freelance writer.

Dr. Subhra Devi is a curatorial member of the museum of Tezpur University, Assam (India). She has done her PhD in some aspects of Conservation of Sanchipat Manuscripts of Assam from National Museum Institute of History of Art, Museology and Conservation, New Delhi. She was a Mellon Fellow at the Objects Conservation Department of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York during 2014-15. She received Nehru Trust UK Visiting Fellowship for studying motifs of Assamese handloom textiles in the museum collections of UK. Her career interest is study, documentation and conservation of indigenous art, particularly of North East India.

Nikhil Joshi is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Educated at the University of Pune (India), University of York (UK) and National University of Singapore (Singapore). His research interests include cultural heritage management; traditional building materials and techniques; and community participatory approaches. Before joining NUS, Nikhil worked and taught in India, UK, and Malaysia for over a decade. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, UK, and recipient of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings – Lethaby Scholarship, UK. He has been an active speaker in various conferences throughout the world and has several publications to his name. His main recent publications include Mahabodhi Temple at Bodhgaya: Constructing sacred placeness, deconstructing the ‘great case’ of 1895 (2019); Managing change: Urban heritage and community development in historic Asian cities (2018, edited); Community voices: Preserving the local heritage (2016); People + places: Exploring the living heritage of Songkhla old town (2016, edited)

Kalamandir Saksham SHG Federation is run by artisans and is a registered society. It has been promoted to market and sale artifacts, paintings etc through a unique showroom at heart of the city of Jamshedpur. It is a place where every tourist, educationist and corporate executives visit. It is a self sustained enterprise being run since 2007 under the guidance of 117 active artisan members. Kalamandir is an organisation that believes in preserving and restoring tribal art and culture. Kalamandir is engaged in nurturing a sense of aesthetics about tribal art among individuals, communities, organisations and social groups. The target groups of Kalamandir are tribal artisans/ artists/ women and youth. All these groups are deprived and have no voice or any kind of social or political platform. The multi-cultural, multi-lingual vibrancy of tribal communities residing in the state of Jharkhand is being eroded due to mining, deforestation, lack of political will, corruption and administrative apathy.\nKalamandir operates with a vision to foster necessity and accessibility of arts and aesthetics in our day to day social life. We are engaged in constantly supporting, nurturing and disseminating the finer aesthetic sense among individuals, communities, organisation s and social groups. Countering the mono culture, we look for a creative, dynamic and diversified environment for the young minds among tribes and non-tribes of Jharkhand - who are full of finer senses.

The Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation is a public charitable trust established to articulate annalternative vision for the arts and media in Ladakh. The organization set up the LAMO Centre in Leh,nthe main town of the region, to provide a space for the understanding and development of the arts.\nThe complex on which the Centre is located comprises two historical houses below the 17th centurynLechen Pelkhar (Leh Palace). The houses were restored by LAMO and converted to an arts spacenwith galleries, offices, a library and reading room, screening room, conference room, and open-airnperformance site. The Centre is designed to conduct outreach programs, lectures, film screenings,nresearch and documentation projects, workshops and exhibitions that showcase Ladakh’s materialnand visual culture, performing arts and literature.

At The Kishkinda Trust (TKT) in Anegundi, conservation empowers communities and creates a way of life that considers culture as an intangible element permeating all activities in life- ranging from functional to ideational-  ecology, cuisine, crafts, design, agriculture, technology, education, markets and festivals. Founded in the year 1997 by Shama Pawar, The Kishkinda Trust (TKT) assists the villagers of Anegundi at a grassroots level to build capacity in order to maintain business incubators and to conserve their historical heritage. TKT runs several unique programs, which are seamlessly integrated with the lives of the local people and that empower them economically.

To provide artisans with the opportunity to realize their creative capacity, and to insure that craft traditions remained genuine cultural heritage, Judy Frater began a design education program for artisans in Kutch. In 2005, Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya opened its doors to artisan students: traditional weavers, ajrakh printers, bandhani artists, and embroiderers, with no further prerequisites of age or formal education.\nIn 2014, the year-long program evolved and expanded to Somaiya Kala Vidya. In six two-week intensive residential sessions spread over a year, artisan students learn to innovate within their traditions. nThe most innovative tool that we use in our design classes is simply to present problems to solve. We also draw on local traditions and teach as practically as possible. In effect, the design course re-imagines traditional systems in an appropriate contemporary form. Master artisan advisors teach students about traditions, as children once learned from elders; weavers, printers, and dyers learning together revitalizes the inherent interdependence in traditional textiles; and interface with urban markets reinvents direct contact with hereditary clients.\nAfter design education for artisans in Kutch reached its goals, Somaiya Kala Vidya is scaling out their approach to other regions. Keeping cultural heritage as the foundation, they intend to teach design within regions, drawing on local language and culture.