A roundup of plans, updates, and developments from Team ADAA. This is an evolving story.
The ADAA campaign has been a bright spot in an otherwise challenging, even bleak, arts and culture landscape in India. As the COVID-19 crisis brought the global cultural industry to a screeching halt, India's cultural workers have been amongst the more severely affected sections of society. Freelance artistes who earned their livelihoods through performances and standing arrangements, and who often grappled with no savings, meagre resources, and providing for several dependents, quickly found themselves with no way to make ends meet.
On April 1 2020, a team of independent artists and individuals comprising Shubha Mudgal, Aneesh Pradhan, Rahul Vohra, Sameera Iyengar, Mona Irani, and Arundhati Ghosh responded swiftly to the COVID-19 crisis and its impact on the cultural labour force. They put together a fundraising campaign titled, Assistance for Disaster Affected Artistes (ADAA), to provide relief to artistes, instrument makers, teachers of music and dance across the country. Read more about the fundraiser on the campaign platform, OurDemocracy.in.
Over the course of several weeks, ADAA was able to raise funds for 132 beneficiaries, and even surpass the initial fundraising goal of Rs. 35 lakh.
While fund disbursement efforts are underway, Team ADAA continues to address the impact of the coronavirus on the cultural sector in the long-term. They have proposed an action plan for state governments that includes three model schemes or funds that can support the sector in this time of crisis and help cultural workers sustain their practice and livelihoods, once the worst of the pandemic has passed.
The three proposed schemes are as follows:
Conversations with state governments on the ADAA proposal are ongoing; this blog post will carry updates as they develop.
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