BCVA director and artist Anand Chhabra recently took part in the India–UK Creative Industries 75 (IUKCI 75)research project led by Professor Rajinder Dudrah at Birmingham City University (BCU). The initiative brought together artists and researchers to explore new creative collaborations and build international networks between the UK and India.
Towards the conclusion of the project, Anand was approached by musician Saurav Sharma, who had been working within a separate strand of the programme, to explore a potential collaboration. The project soon expanded to include classical dancer Sangini Kumar, bringing together three distinct artistic practices.
The collaboration was inspired by the work of the renowned Punjabi Sufi poet Bulleh Shah, whose poetry reflects themes of spirituality, identity and the search for deeper meaning. Drawing on these ideas, the artists explored how Sufi poetry could be interpreted through multiple artistic forms, combining music, dance and visual practice.
The India–UK Creative Industries 75 project, with its focus on building artist networks and encouraging creative experimentation, helped foster this collaborative spirit. The wider artist showcase within the programme addressed a broad range of themes, including social justice, migration, reinterpretations of traditional narratives and reflections on spirituality.
The collaborative work developed through this project contributes to the growing creative archive emerging from the IUKCI 75 initiative. By bringing together three distinct art forms, the collaboration demonstrates how creative practice can transcend geographical boundaries, cultural traditions and artistic disciplines.
Through projects such as this, artists are able to explore new ways of working together, showing how contemporary artistic collaboration can bridge differences between the traditional and the modern while creating new shared creative expressions.