In an effort to provide benefits of the state government’s schemes during the COVID-19 pandemic, a database of artists pertaining to the field of various arts and crafts in Rajasthan, is being curated with the aid of crowdsourcing. The venture will extend support to the community of artists in the state, who have been struggling to earn during this pandemic at hand. This initiative has made Rajasthan the first state in the country, to do so.
Call for Arts & Artists
Mugdha Sinha, Secretary, Art and Culture Department, and Director General, Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, mentioned that her department had launched the ‘Mukhyamantri Lok Kalakar Protsahan Yojana’ (Chief Minister’s Folk Artist Encouragement Scheme) on April 11, 2020 to offer help to the artists. She stated that the details about the artists across the state will be collected through crowdsourcing, meaning the government will utilise the labour, information and so on, contributed by the general public, often via the internet.
The Art, Literature and Culture Minister B D Kalla, launched this initiative at 11 AM on October 10th. The Call for Artist Database includes basic details along with the genre of artform, including performing arts, visual arts, literary arts, dying arts, wandering arts (ghoomantu), folk arts, tribal arts and others. Sinha further mentioned, “Reaching out to and involving stakeholder artists themselves in collecting this data through Google Form is truly participative policy making and inclusive approach. With the database of artists, the government can extend the necessary help to them.”
Performing artists’ options in music, include vocalists, instrumentalists and others; performing arts options in films/television include, actor/actress, director, producer/line producer, script writer, make-up artists and others. On the other hand, performing art options in dance include classical, contemporary, western, folk, tribal and others. Performing art options in other artforms include drama/theatre/nukkad natak/tamasha, trapeze artist or nats.
Similarly, visual art option in paint arts include water colour, oil/acrylic, sketch art, mandala art, print making, woodcut, embroidery art, digital art, graphic art and others. Visual art options in other art forms include sculpture, ceramics, pottery including blue pottery, textile block makers, rangoli/mandana/floor or wall art, jewellery thewa or minakari or kundan, tattoo/godna, among others.
Literary art options include writer, translator, editor, publisher, poet and genealogist, while wandering minstrel of ghoomantu includes Kesh Sajja artists, circus, puppetry, behroopias, amidst others. The other heuristic (handcraft genres) involves knitting, embroidery, crochet, shuttle, photography, carpentry and others.
Artists can e-mail the Google Form to artistdatabasejkk@gmail.com, for which the last date is November 10.
With inputs from IANS