Daricha Foundation

Our primary mission is to spread public awareness about India’s rich and varied folk and tribal culture, starting with West Bengal, mainly through a s Read moretructured, content-rich, dynamic, web portal that is a single-window dedicated to such arts and their practitioners. We also wish to help create a sustainable and dignified means of livelihood for these artists through activities that promote their arts. Our small organization, which started in April 2013, has focused on researching and documenting, in particular, lesser-known folk and tribal arts of West Bengal. Our web portal which was launched in Feb 2014, is an online folk encyclopedia of sorts, featuring more than 50 different rural art forms. These include performing arts, visual arts, crafts, etc. We showcase an artist each month and connect rural artists with buyers/organizers/researchers both nationally and internationally, through our portal. Besides field trips for documentation, we have also organized workshops and training programs both in urban spaces and at the grass-root level, with a special focus on the Santal community. In 2016-17, we conducted major documentation of the magnificent wall art of the Santals in Purulia and continue to promote their culture.