Council for Arts and Social Practice

Council for Arts and Social Practice CASP is a platform for transdisciplinary artistic research and dialogues on cultural sustainability.

Council for Arts and Social Practice (CASP) is a platform for transdisciplinary artistic research and practice to facilitate critical dialogues on cultural sustainability. It aims to integrate sustainable forms of thinking and practice by interconnecting landscapes, built environments, people, and everyday life. CASP formulates ideas of mutualism by promoting participatory education, affective lea

rning, and contextual understanding. It facilitates meaningful public interactions through, talks, community initiatives, and collaborative projects, fostering a relational engagement at both individual and institutional levels. CASP engages with artists, curators, educators, architects, designers, filmmakers, community organizers, social researchers, students and children. We collaborate with people in informal urban settlements, peri-urban spaces, and villages through site-specific projects that employ the arts for community engagement and public pedagogy. Activities:
Conversations | Community-Based Projects | Fieldnotes | Participatory Workshops | Creative Learning and Practice (CLaP) | Exhibitions

[Council for Arts and Social Practice (CASP) is registered as a Section 8 Company (non-profit) since September 2019. It was established as the Centre for Arts and Social Practice in November 2013 and has curated a range of programs/projects since then.]

Dear Friends,Join us at CASP Conversations with Mansi Bhatt (Artist) and Amrita Gupta (Art Historian & Co-director, CASP...
07/04/2026

Dear Friends,

Join us at CASP Conversations with Mansi Bhatt (Artist) and Amrita Gupta (Art Historian & Co-director, CASP) on Saturday, April 18th, 2026 at 6.00pm organized in collaboration with DesignWorks, Navi Mumbai.

Limited Seats Available!
đź“Ť Reserve your free seat now.
📧 Email us at: [email protected]

Venue: DesignWorks, 607, Bhumiraj Costarica
Sector 18, Sanpada, Navi Mumbai.

Mansi Bhatt is a lens-based artist whose practice intersects theatricality, body politics, and social critique. Through performative photography, often extending to sculptural and cinematic transformation, as well as public art, she constructs surreal, incongruous characters via prosthetics, costumes, and exaggerated makeup. Blurring fiction and reality, these figures are drawn from family histories in Sihor, neighbourhood tales and street encounters in Mumbai and elsewhere, and interrogations of the structures of the Indian art world. Incorporating gender as performance, her work probes questions of home, place, migration, identity, belonging, urbanity, capital, and surveyed landscapes.

Her layered approach uses autoethnography as a feminist methodology, weaving time-based, site-responsive photography and performance rooted in lived contexts. By embracing personal vulnerability and her body's material presence, Bhatt positions the self as both subject and site, creating a fluid space of generative possibility. Her immersive performances test physical endurance as a trope, especially in policed, denied, or violently reclaimed environments.

In this conversation, Mansi presents selected works spanning two decades of artistic experimentation across performative photography, installations, and public art, culminating in her recent 30-minute film "Pottery House"(2024-25). This film intertwines multidisciplinary threads around home and belonging, and explores the poetics of memory, presence and absence, and acts of remembrance. The artist will also discuss the aspects of place, space, and the public in her practice.

Refreshments will be served at 5.30pm.

For more, please visit www.casp-india.org. We look forward to your presence!

Warm wishes,
CASP Team

We were delighted to host an engaging edition of CASP Conversations, titled “Dancing and Stumbling Rivers,” on Saturday,...
03/04/2026

We were delighted to host an engaging edition of CASP Conversations, titled “Dancing and Stumbling Rivers,” on Saturday, March 21, 2026, at 5:00 PM in collaboration with the Anuradha Terrace Studio, Salt Lake, Kolkata. The conversation featured Siddharth Agarwal (Founder, Veditum India Foundation) and was moderated by Anuradha Pathak (social art practitioner and co-director, CASP).

As CASP’s first program in the new space in Kolkata, we adopted a hybrid format, with the event bringing together an intimate and diverse group of in-person and online participants. Attendees reflected on rivers as intricate fluvial systems and engaged with the ongoing initiatives of Veditum Foundation India. Siddharth, drawing from walking thousands of kilometers along India’s rivers and leading India Sand Watch, highlighted river ecosystem challenges like destructive sand mining. He emphasized the deep bond between people and rivers. Veditum’s community-building efforts for environmental care remain crucial.

The evening was centered on substantive dialogue and experiential engagement with the interweaving of Veditum’s projects with participatory exercises that invited participants to “experience a river” and “become a river.” These activities were thoughtfully interspersed with audio-visual narratives and moments of reflection. The hybrid format enabled active participation from attendees joining via Zoom, culminating in a lively and open discussion at the end of the session.

CASP extends its sincere appreciation to all attendees—both virtual and in-person—for their thoughtful participation and valuable insights. Special thanks to the Anuradha Terrace Studio for offering a warm and welcoming space that nurtures dialogue at the intersection of arts, ecology, and social practice.

Dear Friends,Join us for a conversation with Siddharth Agarwal (Founder, Veditum India Foundation) and Anuradha Pathak (...
14/03/2026

Dear Friends,
Join us for a conversation with Siddharth Agarwal (Founder, Veditum India Foundation) and Anuradha Pathak (Artist and Co-director, CASP). This will involve an engagement with the work of Veditum through a mix of activities, learning through slides and stories, followed by an open discussion.

🗓 Saturday, March 21, 2026 | ⏰️ 5.00pm
đź“ŤAnuradha Terrace Studio (2nd Floor)
CK - 134, Sector 2 (Near Karunamoyee), Salt Lake, Kolkata.

đź“ť Limited Free Seats Available!
Email us at: [email protected]

For wider outreach, the program will be in hybrid mode.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84963048537...
Meeting ID: 849 6304 8537
Passcode: 133390

A healthy river, in modern understanding, is a "dangerous" river, which floods and moves with no respect to cartographic boundaries defined by men. Yet it is the river's dance that has made civilisation possible.

Rivers are complex fluvial systems that are often misunderstood simply as channels of water. But anyone who has observed free flowing rivers, will inherently know that it is so much more. The river contains water, yes, but also energy, sediments, microscopic to mega animals, plant life, and beyond. It is this interplay of elements that makes rivers move, and in turn our rivers shape landscapes / riverscapes. We have however created pits and paths and walls that are making our rivers stumble. While some parts of the world have realised this folly and are preparing for course correction, we in India are committed to repeat the same follies.

Siddharth Agarwal will be speaking on the challenges faced by our rivers, based on his experience of walking 1000s of kilometres along India's rivers, and from leading projects like India Sand Watch that are working to protect India's rivers from destructive sand mining. He will also emphasise on the relationship between people and rivers, and how larger community building inclined towards the environment is crucial. This community building is a crucial component of Veditum's work.

Refreshments will be served. For more, please visit www.casp-india.org.

We look forward to welcoming you.

Warm wishes,
CASP Team

13/01/2026

Dear Friends,

CASP and Mindscape Festival are delighted to invite you to a conversation on the evolution of the Govandi Arts Festival, a community-led arts and culture movement that reclaims, transforms, and celebrates the socio-spatial narratives of marginalized neighbourhoods in Govandi, located within the M East Ward, Mumbai.

Situated at the Natwar Parekh Colony in a public housing neighbourhood, the Govandi Arts Festival positions the arts as essential urban infrastructure for care, identity, and collective agency. Hosted by the Community Design Agency and co-founded by an artist–architect–social worker trio, the festival centres lived experiences, particularly those of women, and foregrounds youth leadership and cultural expression, supporting communities to author their own narratives.

Community Lead and Organiser, Parveen Shaikh, a Govandi resident, brings over 20 years of advocacy for informal urban dwellers, bridging residents and the collective. Creative Director and Curator Natasha Sharma draws on seven years of work in Govandi, blending participatory research, design, and public art.

This conversation explores how arts-led practices strengthen social bonds, activate public spaces, and reimagine urban futures.

🗓 Friday, January 16th, 2025 | 🕧 8.30pm

đź“ŤAmpitheatre at the Rock Garden, Nerul, Navi Mumbai.

For more, please visit www.mindscapefestival.org.

We look forward to welcoming you!

Warm wishes,
CASP and Mindscape Team

CASP is delighted to be a collaborator at the Mindscape Festival, Navi Mumbai! Mindscape is an inter-disciplinary ideas ...
12/01/2026

CASP is delighted to be a collaborator at the Mindscape Festival, Navi Mumbai!

Mindscape is an inter-disciplinary ideas and arts festival anchored around a set of talks, performances, screenings, workshops and exhibitions. Navi Mumbai, a city with a unique history and character is the host city of the festival.

In its 9th edition, the festival, which is open to all and free to attend is organised by X-Pican, the alumni association of Pillai College of Architecture with support from the Pillai Group of Institutions.

Three evenings and one stage. Many voices and a shared community space.

Here’s the line up for Mindscape 2026 - a coming together of ideas, people and perspectives.

Save the dates, spread the word and be a part of the Mindscape community.

🗓️ January 16th - 18th, 2026

đź•  5:45 PM onwards

đź“ŤAmphitheatre at the Rock Garden in Nerul, Navi Mumbai

# January2026 MindscapeFestival PillaiUniversity PiCA

As we step into 2026, the Council for Arts and Social Practice (CASP) celebrates creativity that connects, questions, an...
03/01/2026

As we step into 2026, the Council for Arts and Social Practice (CASP) celebrates creativity that connects, questions, and transforms.

Wishing our artists, collaborators, and community a year filled with imagination, bold ideas, meaningful dialogues, and collective growth. Happy New Year! 🌟 🎉 🌿

Dear Friends, Join us at CASP Conversations with Surajit Biswas (Artist and Founder, Hidden Artist Initiative) and Amrit...
13/12/2025

Dear Friends,

Join us at CASP Conversations with Surajit Biswas (Artist and Founder, Hidden Artist Initiative) and Amrita Gupta (Art Historian and Co-director, CASP) on Saturday, December 20th, 2025 at 6.00pm IST on Zoom and Facebook Live!

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85308100722...
Meeting ID: 853 0810 0722
Passcode: 939081

The Hidden Artist Initiative (HAI) is an evolving platform in Santiniketan dedicated to supporting individuals - particularly students and emerging creators - whose talents may fall outside traditional academic systems or mainstream art spaces. HAI works to change that by offering mentorship, community, and space to grow.

Founded by artist Surajit Biswas, the initiative hosts writing workshops with expert mentors, hands-on sessions with local potters, and collaborative projects with renowned Manipuri handloom artists. With a focus on experimentation across materials - including terracotta, bamboo, wood, metal, painting, and installation - HAI functions as a research-driven hub for nurturing and amplifying underrepresented voices in the arts.

Connected to this vision is Bhumi Kriya, a platform that unites contemporary artists with local artisans, musicians, and cultural practitioners. Through participatory sessions, public art, installations, and sound explorations, Bhumi Kriya encourages dialogue between heritage and contemporary practice, and documenting creative processes to build a library for learning and exchange.

HAI has recently partnered with the Bahurupi Artist Community, a collective of nearly 70 families in Sh*tal Gram (Birbhum District, West Bengal), known for sustaining their lives through a unique blend of agriculture and performance traditions. In Santiniketan, this collaboration brings together artists, writers, videographers, poets, choreographers, educators, musicians, theatre practitioners, students, and local residents - working side by side under one shared creative space for the first time. In this conversation, Surajit Biswas will introduce his practice and discuss his role as an artist-organizer and how alternative creative ecosystems can spark new possibilities for the future.

The program will be bi-lingual - in Bangla and English.

To know more, please visit www.casp-india.org. We look forward to your presence.

Warm wishes,
CASP Team

We were delighted to host another enriching edition of CASP Conversations, titled 'Gathering in the Green', on Saturday,...
07/12/2025

We were delighted to host another enriching edition of CASP Conversations, titled 'Gathering in the Green', on Saturday, November 29th, 2025 at 5:30 PM, in collaboration with DesignWorks, Sanpada, Navi Mumbai.

The evening brought together an intimate audience of literature lovers and curious minds for a thoughtful exchange on the genesis of 'Poetry in Parks' with our guests: Peter Griffin [poet, journalist, writer, and editor] and Menka Shivdasani [author, translator, and editor].

Through reflections, and lively dialogue, the session explored the many layers of poetic expression and the evolving role of writing in contemporary times. From personal creative journeys to the shifting realities of language, publishing, and translation, the conversation unfolded to urban design, the commons, and the reclaiming of public spaces.

We extend our thanks to everyone who joined us, and shared thoughts. A special word of gratitude to DesignWorks for providing your welcoming space that nurtures conversations around the arts!

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Navi Mumbai

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Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm
Saturday 9am - 5pm

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