Call for applications: MAP Academy & Nalli Fellowships
“Textiles are the one category of artworks which we engage with everyday — through the clothes we wear, in our households and for various purposes. While textile production and design are extensive in India, many of us don’t understand the nuances of how they’re produced or where they come from. The Fellowship is dedicated to fostering wider participation and community learning in textile practices and histories, and aims to bridge various types of knowledge with academia and encourage shared understanding and appreciation.” — Mandara Vishwanath, Special Projects Lead, MAP Academy.
South Asian textiles form a crucial part of regional as well as global histories, and hold a great deal of research potential. Through the MAP Academy & Nalli Fellowships, the two organisations aim to support new projects and relevant educational endeavours to build diverse scholarship and generate greater interest among new and younger audiences. The project combines Nalli’s focus on textile design, innovation and production with the MAP Academy’s vision of fostering incisive research and the study of art histories from South Asia. Towards identifying and bridging gaps in the study and awareness of textile histories, they hope to support projects that meet the following criteria.
The Research Fellowship invites proposals focussing on lesser-known and understudied textiles, practices, communities and histories in South Asia. It will support projects that draw on existing textiles and practices for learning or inspiration, including field research, documentation, and archives. It also encourages a critical and sensitive approach to academic and practice-based research.
The Educator Fellowship seeks proposals for disseminating and democratising knowledge about South Asian textiles through the development of curriculums, fieldwork or work with educational and cultural institutions. Proposed projects will aim to inspire diverse audiences through exhibitions, workshops, or other educational initiatives, in order to foster academic inquiry into textile-based practices or histories.
The collaboration with Nalli Silks brings on board a brand that is synonymous with silk heritage in the South. What led to the collaboration and how will it contribute to the process?
As an educational platform providing freely accessible resources for the study of South Asian art histories, the MAP Academy has worked on a number of projects related to textiles. Our Encyclopedia of Art houses over 400 articles and glossary entries on the subject — with more constantly being written — and our free Online Course ‘Textiles from the Indian Subcontinent’ has over 3600+ learners enrolled. The team has also undertaken a major documentation project focused on silk production in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh to address the dearth of information and the lack of visibility of textiles from these regions. The MAP Academy was also a knowledge partner with Microsoft on INTERWOVEN, an AI-based platform exploring visual connections across museum collections worldwide, focusing particularly on textiles. Collaborating with a legacy silk brand such as Nalli seemed like an organic next step in bringing further light to South Asian textiles as part of the region’s art history and living traditions.
Nalli Silks, established in 1928, is a heritage textile brand with a long history of popularising traditional textiles. As an iconic brand, it is committed to contributing to the field of textiles through continuous research and innovation. It took our teams 8 months to develop the programme, identifying the gaps in textile education and knowledge as well as the lack of resources for independent projects to contribute to the field. With the Fellowship, Nalli hopes to foster a deeper understanding of art, craft and textiles from underrepresented regions, and introduce them to a wider audience.
For the year 2024–25, two fellowships are being offered, each with a grant of INR 5.5 lakhs. Applications will be reviewed by a five-member Advisory Committee comprising Mayank Mansingh Kaul (textile researcher & curator), Dr Annapurna Garimella (art historian and designer), Manju Sara Rajan (co-founder, KAASH), Lavanya Nalli (Vice Chairperson, Nalli Silks), and Mandara Vishwanath (Special Projects Lead, MAP Academy).
Applications are open until 30 September 2024, and anyone based in South Asia over the age of 18 can apply. Please click here to learn more about the project and eligibility criteria.
Find out more and apply:
mapacademy.io/the-map-academy-nalli-fellowships/#about-the-fellowships