B•LORE

T.R. Raghunandan is Advisor to the Accountability initiative and  consultant in decentralization, anti-corruption and heritage conservation at Centre for Policy Research. Formerly in the Indian Administrative Service, he served as Joint Secretary, Government of India, Ministry of Panchayati Raj (Rural local governments, 2004-2009) and as Secretary Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, Karnataka State (2001-2004).

Mr. Raghunandan works in several Indian States directly with Panchayats and their advocacy associations. He is responsible for setting up and running the ipaidabribe.com initiative (2010-2011), which crowd-sources reports on corruption from citizens.

A model-maker, steam railway enthusiast and classic automobile restorer, he is also co-founder of the non-profit Avantika Foundation, working in the areas of decentralized public governance and heritage preservation. Avantika Foundation is setting up a rural museum for children, named the Museum of Movement, to celebrate the romance of transportation in India. It also works with Panchayats in Karnataka state to improve their organizational effectiveness, through the setting up of a Centre for Decentralised Local Government.

Aliyeh Rizvi is a history-travel writer and researcher, curator and founder of Native Place, a collaborative studio for place-based storytelling, where she works with memory and imagination to find new ways in which to connect people to place more meaningfully through stories. This is done through information design-research-based writing, documentation and book publication projects for heritage, travel and culture, and experience design-curatorial practices in place-making that focus on community engagements, story walks and culture tours. Her collaborative curatorial projects include the Chickpete Metro Station Art In Transit public art project, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, and the Bangalore Metro Neighbourhood Project supported by the Bangalore Metro Rail Company (BMRCL). She was also an invitee to the Bangalore Tourism Advisory Committee (BTAC), initiated by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of Karnataka and co-facilitated ‘The Tiger Comes To Town’ a public history project in association with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), while Curator at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology.

She is the co-founder, designer/facilitator of The Memory Maps Project, in collaboration with Arzu Mistry, Art In Transit, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. The Memory Maps Project is a psycho-geographic exploration that has been visualised as a series of community-arts practice-based, place-making workshops. The project seeks to integrate the memories and experiences of a locality with arts practice to create a response to the city, locate yourself in it and build pride of place. She has over twenty years of experience in working with heritage, craft, design and culture, as well writing for publications and dailies including the National Geographic Traveller and as weekly columnist on Bangalore’s local culture for the Bangalore Mirror.

Kiran Natarajan is an IT Professional based in Bengaluru. His work has been mainly in the FinTech space, in strategy, design & development for products like Microbanker/Moneymaker (Citicorp/CITIL), FLEXCUBE (i-Flex), FinanceKIT/Intrabank (Wall Street) and most recently, Oracle Banking Platform & Cloud Services. His client experience spans Corporate Treasury & Banking segments across Europe, UK the Middle East & USA.

Aligned to his passion of collecting ephemera & memorabilia related to the city, he is an Admin/curator of the vintage photo & nostalgia group “Bygone Bangalore” on Facebook. A regular invitee columnist/author and speaker on heritage & historical topics for newspapers & magazines, he also retains interests in Philately, Organic Farming and related ventures.

Harini Nagendra is a Professor of Sustainability at Azim Premji University, where she anchors the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability. Over the past 20 years, her research has examined people-nature relationships in forests and cities from the perspective of both ecology and equity. For her interdisciplinary research and practice, she has received a number of awards including the 2009 Cozzarelli Prize from the US National Academy of Sciences, the 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award, and the 2017 Clarivate Web of Science award. Her publications include the books “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present and Future” (Oxford University Press, 2016) and “Cities and Canopies: The Tree Book of Indian Cities” (Penguin, 2019) as well as recent publications in Nature, Nature Sustainability, and Science. She writes regularly on public science issues in newspapers, blogs and other fora.

Naresh V Narasimhan is a practitioner and leader with three decades of experience in architecture and urban design. He is best known for his association with Venkataramanan Associates – an award winning architecture firm.

As co‐founder of MOD (an international collective of urban designers, researchers and curators), founder & trustee of Imagine Bangalore and founder of Cobalt (a new concept of a work and meeting space that facilitates serendipitous encounters) Naresh has fuelled a variety of progressive causes in the city.

Kirtana Kumar is an actor, director, and filmmaker based in Bangalore. She has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation and the India Foundation for the Arts for her work in theatre and film. She is a trustee of the Women Artists’ Group, runs the year-long Theatre Lab for children, and is a co-founder of Infinite Souls Farm, an artists’ residency. Bangalore Blues is her first book.

Dr Indira Chandrasekhar is a scientist, a writer, a literary curator and the founder and principal editor of Out of Print, one of the primary platforms for short fiction bearing a connection to the Indian subcontinent. An anthology celebrating ten years of the magazine was just brought out by Context Books and a collection of her short stories, Polymorphism, was published by HarperCollins.

Born in Benaras, Chitra Vishwanath has graduated from the School of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad. After her graduation (1989), she moved to Bangalore and started her firm Chitra Vishwanath Architects in 1991. In 2008 the firm changed its name to Biome Environmental Solutions in order to emphasize the collaborative nature of the practice, which addresses ecological issues through design as its primary focus. Biome has won many notable awards and Chitra has been involved with a few educational institutions in varying capacities.

Gayatri Chandrashekar is a senior print and TV Journalist with decades of experience in Doordarshan News and art magazine “Sruti”. Her canvas is vast and includes Politics, Space, Finance, Science and Technology and Performing Arts.

In year 2015 she wrote and published her first book “Grit and Gold” on the industrial / social history of Kolar Gold Fields. International channels have telecast her interviews on KGF.

Last month her book of translation, “Detective Saambu” was released in Chennai. She has rendered the book from the original Tamil “Thuppariyum Saambu” into English. Both books are available on Amazon and Flipkart.

Gayatri is an acclaimed performing artiste with All India Radio and Doordarshan in classical Karnatic music and has given National Programmes of Music over  decades. Her role as a teacher of music has also been utilised by AIR in their Amritavarshini/Raagam channels.

Gayatri has successfully done a programme for “India Foundation for the Arts” on “Engaging with the Neighbourhood.”

Srinidhi Prahlad is the founder curator of Beneath-A-Tree, a STEM museum, archive, makerspace, intersecting with gender and everyday history. He curates a curriculum and program for teaching STEM mindsets in over ten states. He’s been a public speaker, author and spoken word poet.

An artist and muralist, Girija Hariharan has always been interested in art for social change.
She has been actively involved in painting murals and engaging people in the public space through provoking murals with hopes of bringing a shift in social thinking. Her themes revolve around feminism and social justice, woven around mythology. Some of her projects include murals on the banks of river Yamuna, Kamathipura, and the streets of Malleshwaram in our city to name a few.

Amitabh Kumar is a designer, artist based out of Bangalore. He is a visiting faculty at Srishti School of Art and Design and Technology. He also initiated the Art in Transit project along with Arzu Mistry, which works extensively across public spaces in Bangalore. He has been painting murals across the country for years now. Some of his projects include murals with Art in Transit, St+art India, Geechagalu, etc.

Parameshwaran S is a visual artist, art and production designer and street artist. He takes inspiration from everyday life and seeks to bring the unseen and unnoticed to light. Challenging social norms and attempts to give them representation. He has worked on various projects from the ‘Birds’ dawning the Cubbon Metro station to the streets of Malleshwaram, his murals are spread all over the city.

Jatin is part of the ‘Trespassers’ collective that is a 7 member group of artists, hailing from different corners of Kerala. They are an artist collective trying to experience and experiment the position of artists and art spaces in art practice. They aim to bring art to the public through the street and foster a dialogue between people. They believe the public artwork can become everyone’s visual memory. They are on a mission to ‘trespass’ cultures through their murals that blend into the surrounding community. Their works can be found on walls, both public and private in and around Kerala.

Sahana is a social change communicator – working with civil society organisations and a philanthropic foundation to design their communication strategies by finding powerful messages & mediums. She has always been interested in public spaces and art. As a street art enthusiast, over the last few years she has been actively documenting and curating public artwork around the city and the country.

Prasad Bidapa is a pioneer in the Indian fashion industry for the last four decades. An iconic fashion guru of India and alumni of NID Ahmedabad, he is the creator of high-profile events including India Men’s Fashion Week, Colombo International Fashion Week, Kingfisher Fashion Awards and Mega Model Hunt.

A textile expert himself, he has presented the Rajasthan Heritage Week since 2015. This is a project he developed for the Khadi Board, for the Government of Rajasthan. This is considered to be one of the most successful khadi and handloom revival projects in the country.

He has presented shows in the USA, Japan, Sweden, the Middle East, Singapore, Sri Lanka and other nations. In 2019, he presented the Mahatma Gandhi Sesquicentennial Show at the Embassy of India, Qatar.

He is currently working with various government departments to create similar handloom revival projects in various other Indian states. He works with national and international designers to present the products of India in hand loomed cotton, wool, silk and khadi.

Priya Chetty Rajgopal is a Bengaluru-based Executive Search Consultant and a citizen activist. She is an industry leader and a CXO search consultant with experience across global companies like Diners Club, DBS, Stanton Chase, Recruit.

As an active civic evangelist, champion of women’s leadership and gender diversity, and a  transformational leader & seasoned campaigner. She may be lauded as co-founder of CfB, which architected the famed Steel Flyover Beda movement in Bangalore, one of the strongest & most memorable of citizen campaigns, but she is equally committed to heritage as the founder of Heritage Beku. A columnist in her spare time, she remains passionate about Executive Search, Bangalore, Women’s Causes, Urban Spaces and Animal Rescue, not necessarily in that order. In her time off, Priya wonders about being a Google Doodle, is happiest working on animal advocacy issues, spending time with her family, curled up with her iPad or a book in hand.

A social entrepreneur and an actor, Munira Sen has over 30 years of entrepreneurial experience both in building social enterprises and grass-roots organizations. Munira has been an integral part of the core team of Common Purpose, a not-for-profit organisation, that was involved in setting up the India operation since its inception in 2008. She has also been instrumental in facilitating the South Asia Venture in Mumbai and the Chicago Leadership Academy in Delhi.

Apart from being a successful entrepreneur, Munira is also a well-known theatre artist and she has performed in many theatrical productions in India.

Theatre person, author, community media practitioner and educator, Ashish Sen is passionate about communication and culture for social change. Founder President of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) Asia-Pacific region, he has been actively associated with the movement since its inception in India. Sen has worked extensively in theatre both as an actor and director since the 1970s in Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore. He is particularly interested in Indian writing in English and has worked with several playwrights from the sub-continent including Poile Sengupta, Sadiqa Peerbhoy, Mahesh Dattani, Khalid Ahmed, Gurcharan Das, and G.K. Jayaram. As a Director, his recent productions include ‘The Costume Party’, by G K Jayaram, ‘9 Jakhoo hill’ by Gurcharan Das, ‘Flypaper Trap’, by Swati Simha, ‘Marry Go Round’, by Sadiqa Peerbhoy and ‘The Open Couple’, by Dario Fo. A recipient of the Keith Yeomans Global Award for community media, Sen is currently Editor of Community Radio News, a journal brought out tri-annually by the UNESCO Chair on Community Media, and an adviser with RadioActive, Bangalores first community radio station. He is on the Advisory Board of the National School of Journalism (Bangalore), and Trustee of both the Naina Devi Foundation (New Delhi) and the Lalita Shivaram Ubhayekar Foundation for the Arts (Bangalore).

Suresh Jayaram is an artist, art historian, arts administrator and curator from Bangalore. He is the Founder, Director of Visual Art Collective/1.Shanthiroad Studio which is an international artist’s residency and alternative art space in Bangalore, India.
 He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in painting from the College of Fine Arts, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, and Master of Fine Arts from the M.S.University, Baroda in 1992 in Art Criticism.

He is currently involved in urban mapping and archiving the city of Bangalore, curation and Arts education. His keen interest in environmental and urban developmental issues influences his work. Suresh taught Art History at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, the College of Fine Arts in Bangalore, and later went on to become the Principal between 2005-2007. Currently, he is one of the trustees of the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath.

He is actively involved in networking and collaborating with artists and art organizations to create a conversation across cultures locally and globally. He often mentors students with projects, curates walk in the city about nature and culture. He runs an open house at his studio and regularly cooks and serves food to connect and encourage creative encounters among people.

Some of his significant work has included “Bangalore’s Lalbagh: A Chronicle of the Garden and the City” published by VAC Trust, edited a book “The 1Shanthiroad Cookbook” published by Reliable Copy, curated Urban Fabric part of IFA grant on a curated project about Bangalore, researched and curated exhibition and compiled monograph for the ‘Krumbiegel Project’ – A research, documentation, and art project supported by Goethe Institut Bangalore that looked at the contribution of Gustav Herman Krumbiegel, a German horticulturist and urban planner of significance in South India.

Shubha Priya is a freelance creative consultant, writer and author. She moved from the city to north Bangalore, exploring its nature and hidden gems, such as the Nallur heritage forest, Chikkajala Fort and and the 100 year old train stations.