MMF-PARI Fellowship 2024-2025

Application closes on 10th Dec 2024

Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation:
The Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF) was established in 2015, keeping with the vision of the artist Mrinalini Mukherjee, to carry forth the legacy of the Mukherjee family which include her parents, the critically acclaimed modernist Benode Behari Mukherjee and artist educator Leela Mukherjee.

The Mukherjees were deeply engaged in exploring and documenting various forms of living traditions from across India. What they learnt from the practices and attitudes of artisans – the energy, sense of space, material experimentation and idea of the collective – were often incorporated into their own artistic vocabularies and work methods. By studying and working closely with vernacular art practitioners the Mukherjees opened up the world of artistic exploration beyond the confines of disciplinary boundaries.

It is this spirit that MMF celebrates through our collaboration with PARI, where we come together to support a cohort of fellows who will document, study and critically engage with the practices and the practitioners of arts and crafts from rural India.

About People’s Archive of Rural India:
The People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) is both a living journal and an online archive to record and bring to national focus the labour, livelihoods, languages, art, crafts, histories and cultures of rural Indians. It covers the most complex part of the planet: rural India, with 833 million human beings, 780 languages, multiple cultures and unrivalled occupational diversity. It captures these many worlds through videos, photographs, audio and text. PARI will be the biggest rural knowledge repository of its kind anywhere. Millions whose stories remain largely unseen in mainstream media get to tell them here. The Library on PARI website is also a resource for research scholars and students. Through the PARI Education section we have collaborated with schools, colleges and universities for students to learn from and create content for the site.

At PARI, we are covering over 95 historical, cultural and geographical regions of India. For this, we grant fellowships to people willing and able to cover the various districts in the regions and bring stories of the lives, labour, art, craft and languages of the everyday people from those regions. All of our content is also translated and published in at least 14 other Indian languages: Assamese, Bhojpuri, Bengali, Chhattisgarhi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi,
Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. We also publish stories written originally in Indian languages.

We are losing worlds and voices within rural India of which future generations will know little or nothing. P. Sainath

Mrinalini Mukherjee Foundation (MMF) in collaboration with People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI), invites applications for the MMF-PARI Fellowship 2024-25.

In our efforts to create a systematic record of the incredible diversity of rural India, we call for applications for six Junior Fellowships, each required to develop four multimedia stories over a period of eight months for PARI’s online platform.
Your proposal for this grant will require a clear focus on arts and crafts from rural India. You may take cues from PARI stories on livelihoods of artists, artisans and craftspersons:

Things we make. The proposal should focus on one or more of the following:

Living art and craft traditions
Social and cultural context of artisan communities
Art and craft in a contemporary context
The role of technology in the lives of artisans and their practice
Public forums for engagement with arts (festivals, rituals and ceremonies)
New or unusual material used in arts and crafts
Collaborations between artists
Local cuisines and unique food practices of rural India

Applicants are encouraged to explore questions relevant to contemporary discourses on art and archiving practices, and engage with forms of artistic research which can drive their fellowships and go beyond traditional forms of documentation.

To get an idea of the kind of stories that are expected, please can refer to the last two years of the MMF-PARI Fellows’ stories.

This year we will be giving preference to proposals focusing on voices of marginalised communities and under-represented art forms and traditions. We request applicants to especially focus on arts and crafts by women, and people belonging to the Dalit and Adivasi communities.

Number of Fellowships: Six
Type: Junior Fellowship
Fellowship duration: Eight months
Award amount: Rs. 1 lakh each

Please note: The fellowship amount of Rs. 100,000 (one lakh only) will be disbursed in parts, with an initial advance, and the rest in tranches subject to submission and publishing of each story.

Timeline:
October 21, 2024 – Open call
December 10, 2024 – Last date of application submission
January 15, 2025 – Announcement of selected applicants
February 1, 2025 – fellowship commences

Focus: Arts and crafts in rural India, in particular focusing on those by women and people belonging to the Dalit and Adivasi communities.

Application selection process: Open call. The jury will consist of people from MMF, PARI and an independent jury member.

Eligibility: Applicants must be Indian citizens, who currently live and work in India. Applicants must be 18 years or above. You may apply as individuals or a team of two people. If selected, the fellowship amount of Rs. 1 lakh will be shared by the team.

How to apply for the MMF-PARI Fellowship?

We request applicants to apply for the fellowship through ONLINE mode ONLY with the following documents:

1. Proposal: A detailed proposal clearly stating your 4-6 story ideas/pitches focusing on the art, craft or artisanal communities you wish to cover. Please read this document for more details on how to pitch a story. Your proposal document must also include the following:

1.1 Timeline: All stories must be submitted and published within eight months (February 1 to September 30, 2025) of the fellowship.

1.2 Budget: The fellowship award is Rs. 1 lakh and includes all project costs (travel and equipment hire), and an honorarium of Rs. 2,000 to the artisan(s) of each story that you write.

1.3 Undertaking: Every proposal must be accompanied by an undertaking clearly stating that only original stories will be submitted.

2. Resume/CV: Up-to-date with complete contact information (email, postal address and phone number), and links to professional work. If you have a website, you may share the link in your Resume/CV. If you wish to share photographs/videos with us, you can upload them in a Google Drive folder and share the link or directly share Youtube links for videos in the Resume/CV. If you wish to share published articles you can include those links as well. In addition to the above, you must include your current employment details or ongoing projects you are involved in. If you are applying as a team of two people, please include Resume/CVs of both the team members in the same PDF.

All the above details (Proposal and Resume/CVs) should be submitted in 2 separate PDF documents via this google form: https://forms.gle/GoY3JmHoWZhFnQrbA.

Please DO NOT send your proposal via email.

For any further queries you may write to fellowships@ruralindiaonline.org and copy info@mrinalinimukherjeefoundation.org

Fellowship Process:

Mentoring: Fellows will be supported and guided by the PARI team during the documentation and writing process. They will get an opportunity to work closely with the editorial team which includes senior editors, photographers, film makers, video editors and photo editors who will help the Fellows to develop their stories and get them ready for publishing on the PARI website.

Expected output:

Fellows will have to contribute 4 multimedia stories to PARI — text articles with photos OR video films of 5 to 10 minutes with a brief writeup OR photo stories.

The final outcome could be a combination of different story formats, for instance:

2 text stories with photos + 1 photo essay + 1 video film

OR
2 photo stories + 2 video films

3 text stories with photos + 1 photo story etc.

Please read the Guidelines outlined by PARI for detailed information on different story formats.
Fellows will need to submit one story every alternate month to complete the fellowship in the stipulated time.
The text, photographs, videos/audios and documents will be submitted to PARI and MMF. The copyright of the stories and all material will jointly belong to the Fellow, PARI and MMF.

Creative Commons Licensing: All content (text, photos, videos and audio) provided to PARI during the fellowship period will fall within the Creative Commons license that applies to all our content, allowing anyone to copy, distribute, and display such content as long as proper credit is given to PARI and the Fellow, and the content is not changed or used commercially. Stories produced under this fellowship will need to be shared with the following: ‘Developed under the MMF-PARI Fellowship (year)’

Principles:

Fellows must abide by these principles:

Seek the consent of artists/interviewees.
Be considerate of the rights of the artist/interviewee and especially aware of the protection of interviewees who are minors or from tribal communities.
Keep within the confines of the contract signed with the PARI/MMF.

FAQs

1. Who can apply for the fellowship?

● Applicants must be Indian citizens, who currently live and work in India.
● Applicants must be 18 years old or above.

2. Can OCI holders (Overseas Indian) apply for the fellowship?

● OCI holders are NOT eligible to apply for this fellowship.

3. Can one or more people apply for the fellowship?

● You may apply as individuals or a team of two people.
● If selected, the fellowship amount of Rs. 1 lakh will have to be shared by the team.

4. What is the duration of the fellowship and when does it start?

● The fellowship is for eight months and expected to start in February 2025.

5. What is the fellowship amount?

● It is an all-inclusive amount of Rs. 100,000 (one lakh only) paid in instalments of Rs. 25,000.
● The first instalment will be paid at the beginning of the fellowship and the subsequent instalments will be paid in tranches after the submission and publishing of each story.

6. Can the proposal be in an Indian language?

● Yes, you may write the proposal in English or other Indian languages (Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, and Tamil). It would be helpful if you can send an English translation along with the language proposal. If not, we will get it translated.

7. How many stories must be submitted during the fellowship?
● A minimum of 4 stories are to be submitted during the eight-month fellowship. At least one story must be submitted every alternate month.

8. Will the stories submitted by the Fellow have to be in English?

● We support stories written in Indian languages which will be edited and published along with an English translation. Stories may also be submitted in English.

9. What format of the stories is expected?

● Stories can be one or more of: Text articles with photos/ Video films with a brief text writeup/ Photo stories or Photo essays. For detailed guidelines on story format, refer to this: PARI Story Guidelines

10. Who holds the copyright of the stories and material created for the fellowship?

● The copyright of stories and other material will jointly belong to the Fellow, PARI and MMF.