Talacchanda Exhibition and Education Project 2002-03

Talacchanda was a wide ranging, multi-disciplinary, international project, based on themes from ancient Indian theatre. The visual art and dance collaboration between Ranjana Thapalyal and Bharata Natyam dancer Anjana Rajan detailed on this website in the exhibitions section, opened at the British Council Queens Gallery in 2000, was re-imagined for Out of the Blue, Edinburgh in 2001, and then for the Tramway, Glasgow in 2002.

Exhibition Based:

At Tramway the exhibition was paralleled by an extensive education and outreach programme with tailored workshops for a broad range of participants. These included community groups such as the Pollokshields Writers Group, dance students of the Scottish Academy of Asian Arts, Scottish Ballet Youth and Integrated Companies, as well as Primary and Secondary schools and Further and Higher Education institutions. At Reid Kerr College a specialist workshop took place with Anjana Rajan and Anu Kimar leading dance students in an exploration of BSL and Bharata Natyam hand gestures as sign language. At Glasgow School of Art Ken Mitchel invited the incorporation of themes from Talacchanda with the First Year Fine Art term-long project ‘Body as Language’.

Beyond the Exhibition:

Aiming to to act as a catalyst for inter-cultural collaborative links and fresh thinking on anti-racist education, unique talks and workshops were spaced out prior to and beyond the exhibition, over a period of nearly eighteen months across Glasgow, with Anjana also taking dance workshops to Leeds and wider Yorkshire schools. Coinciding with the University of Strathclyde Gender, Culture, Power conference devised by Eileen Yeo, the Talacchanda exhibition was incorporated into the conference programme and a paper given by Ranjana. In the run up to the exhibition Glasgow School of Art students from the Art and Design in Education programme led by Patsy Forde were introduced to postcolonial theory and invited to inform their classroom based projects and methods with such awareness. The pedagogic approaches championed and developed in the Talacchanda education project were central to the formulation and programming of the 2002 and 2003 annual study days of GSA’s Department of Historical and Critical Studies led by Jane Allan. These principles also underpinned a staff study day on inter-cultural and anti-racist strategies for art education led by Dr. Paul Dash of Goldsmiths University of London.