By Sachin Murdeshwar

 

Mumbai  : The Godrej India Culture Lab launched the second season of its one-of-its-kind Leadership Programme, an intense month-long internship for humanities students to give them a deep dive into Mumbai’s cultural industry and inculcate within them skills to become future cultural change makers.

The team hosted their first session at Ramnarain Ruia College, Matunga, on July 17 where Lab Head, Parmesh Shahani, engaged students in an interactive session pertaining to the Lab and the Programme.

In the next six weeks, the Lab team will be visiting colleges across the city to deliver talks and open call for applications for the programme. They will visit the School of Environment and Architecture, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, St. Xavier’s College, Rachana Sansad, Sir JJ School of Arts and IDC-IIT Bombay.

To apply for the programme, they must answer the following question: ‘WHAT IS YOUR IDEA FOR ORGANIZING ONE CULTURAL EVENT IN MUMBAI? Tell them the idea, why it is needed and how you think the event will be.’ The students have a fortnight after the talk to come back to the team with answers and remain free to use any medium (poetry, film, essays, stop-motion graphics, etc). The programme includes masterclasses from cultural experts, visits to various cultural spaces in the city and co-curating a world-class event with the Lab.

September onwards, the applicants will go through a rigorous whetting process after which five students will be part of the Godrej India Culture Lab Leadership Programme batch of 2018-19, who will begin their internship at the Lab in May 2019.

Godrej India Culture Lab, Head, Parmesh Shahani says, “We had an incredible first batch of the Godrej India Culture Lab Leadership Programme where seven students were given a life changing one-month internship at our Culture Lab. This year, the competition is going to be fiercer since we have added the number of colleges we are speaking at. The aim is to find the brightest minds from the best Humanities schools in Mumbai and I am excited to see their applications.”

In the first season, the students undergoing internship curated an event called ‘Urdu Culture Now’, an exploration of the different expressions of Urdu in contemporary India at the lab