Gophika - Hello. Good morning. Angarika - Hi! Gophika - How are you doing? Angarika - I'm good. I just realised I have not seen you in a really long time. Gophika - Yes. Angarika - So it's odd to suddenly see you behind the screen. Gophika - Yes, and then seeing each other, it's like, on Zoom Gophika - When actually we'd like Angarika - On Zoom Gophika - To have been able to meet in person. Gophika - But yeah, it's one thing about today is, doesn't it feel really nice to be doing a conversation in the morning on...[voice cuts off] Angarika- Did I lose you or did, is it my internet? Hello? Am I audible? Was it you or was it me? Gophika - It was me, it was me. Gophika - We were just briefed about our internet connections and on cue. Angarika - There it goes, yeah. Gophika - There it went, but I'm back, I'm back. So I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today and when Bronwyn spoke to me about trouble making, you came to mind, so. Angarika - I'm not sure what to make of that. Gophika - So I thought it would be fun to have a conversation that we might have had maybe over coffee just for a lot of people Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - around the world to see. No pressure. Gophika - So I'm gonna jump right in Angarika, cause I think today, you know, obviously we're talking about collectives, we're talking about unions, we're talking about all of those groups that don't really fit into defined organisations and institutions. Angarika - Yeah, yeah. Gophika - And you are involved with Maraa collectives and I would love it if you could tell us a bit more about Maraa and what you do and yeah. Take it away. Tell us more. Angarika - Yeah, sure. Whenever somebody asks us what Maraa is, it's always really difficult to kind of find a concise way of talking about it, and I think that's sort of also part of the politics of how we came together, because we've tried really hard to not be an issue specific organisation. So it's not so easy to say that we work on say women or health or gender, but rather, I guess the purest way to articulate what we do is that we're an arts and media collective, and Maraa is not an abbreviation because that's another question we get asked a lot, but in the local language, over here in Kannada, it means "tree." And I think the metaphor of a tree is really intrinsic to the way in which we work because it is about growth and it is about flowering, but it's also about decay. It's also about things falling off. It's also about being rooted, but also kind of reaching out in different directions, and that's something that we draw a lot of inspiration from. But I mean, just in a couple of lines, we are a very small collective, where it's just six or seven, six or seven people, and we work through the arts and through community media to foreground experiences and narratives that we feel are censored, are suppressed, and are neglected. So really trying to open up political imaginations through rediscoveries of history, through supporting independent arts practise, through promoting community media. So that's kind of what we do, and that usually ends up being at the intersection of gender, labour and caste, particularly in the context of India. But yeah, that's sort of who we are, and I guess we can talk more as we go along. Gophika - Nice. Angarika - Is there a lag? Gophika - I can hear you fine. Angarika - Okay nevermind. Let's just ignore it and go on. Gophika - Yeah. So I think like when we talk, like what comes to mind, so we're talking, I mean the title of the talk is unregistered collectives, right, and when we were thinking about what to call it, like we were trying to figure out what it was. One of the words was formal and informal and what sit with, what sat with me a little bit uncomfortably about calling formal and informal is that, how do you qualify whether something is formal or informal? Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - When you talk about funding? Cause we're talking about resourcing and how to move money to places where change is happening. I guess the simplest way to talk about it was unregistered, but I know that Maraa is registered, but works with a number of different unregistered groups Angarika - Yeah Gophika - "Commonly" unregistered. And like I myself am not, I don't work for a collective, like full disclosure. I've worked with a number of collectives, and one of the things that kept hitting me was about how much amazing work was being done, like outside of the traditional structures of what we consider, you know, change and outcomes and outputs and all of these things that we define and we've come to define in the formal resourcing ecosystem. And that's why I thought it would be really interesting to talk about what they are and how we need to think about them much more intentionally, especially when it comes to resourcing and especially now like Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - I mean, we're both in India, so we know what's happening here, and you know, it's not, you know, we grew up in the civil society movement and we just, in our own activist lives, we've seen the change in Angarika - Yeah Gophika - How the political, socio-political environment is. So yeah, it just really struck me about the importance of talking about collectives, and then also, obviously not looked at, probably looked at, but also something that needs to get more attention is, you know, formalised organising, like unions and labour. Angarika - Yeah yeah. Gophika - Yeah. Angarika - Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that's also like a bit of a question is what is a collective in the sense of, I suppose, one way to look at it would be the structure, and I think something that I found in most collectives that I've interacted with is that they're often horizontally structured. And that's something that, I mean, we've really tried to do as well, which is that we found that a lot of traditional development agencies had a lot of internal hierarchies, and I think that happens because, in order to get funding, you have to look at your work mainly as projects, and I think when projects start defining the imagination of work, then everything becomes a target or a timeline, and that begins to mirror in the internal workings of the organisation as well. So I think one thing has definitely been to kind of try and see if we can visualise the model of working differently. And it's not that we've got, I mean, it's not that we're a hundred percent successful. We find ourselves falling into the same traps as well, but it's something that we've tried to really work, feed into our working mechanisms to ensure that things are more process driven rather than kind of locked into project frameworks, because this is something that we've been, we've been talking recently to a lot of older feminist organisations, and something that we've found, which is so curious, is that somehow over the years, probably also because of a certain kind of saturation and exhaustion, things have gotten, like life itself has gotten locked into, you know, certain ways of thinking and seeing, & it's really difficult to then bring yourself out of that. So in a given organisation, there will be, say a programme on women and children, and then a separate programme with men and boys and that's not really how life works, so I guess one thing would definitely be the ways of working. And I think another thing that I've come across is that there's not that much, there might be some questions based on scale. I mean, usually I think when we think of change, we think of scale and we think of our large numbers and that does have a value, there is value in that. But I found with a lot of collectives, and this also, of course, links to resourcing, but I think it's also a political conscious choice to not work only in terms of quantity and scale, but also to think about what it means to work, for example, hyper-locally, or what it means to go in depth and stay with something for a longer period of time and what that would look like. And I was wondering like, because you also worked on the other end of things in terms of supporting a lot of feminist collectives. So what are some of the kind of imaginations of collectives that you've come across in your work? Gophika - I think one else, the other things like to add to what you said is around those sort of shared, I mean, I think organisations also make their own shared values and principles, but I do think because of the, like what you talked about, the structure of how things are, the ability to keep coming back to those values and principles and those sort of, you know, core. Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - What we agree on as equals and how we, you know, distribute resources within. I know Maraa, for example, distributes its resources equally amongst members of the collective, and that's really good. Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - I mean, that shows a lot about how those values and principles play, because I think, I mean, one can also say organisations can also, you know, feel like collectives also. You could've register, and I mean, you might, eventually you might have to also do that. But I think, also, I've seen the ability to be able to contribute to something collectively, but also, you know, have space to develop your own politics and your own way of Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - You know, your own sort of, you know, what you are passionate about and how that individual sort of, you know, feeds into the collective, you know, working with, I mean, one of the collectives I worked with recently for a comics anthology was the Kadak Collective, a group of south Asian artists who came together quite organically, both in India and the diaspora, and they just started realising that as an individual artist, the way to sort of, you know, get visible, also being south Asian, brown, marginalised from different identities, it was difficult to, and in the sort of mainstream art world, to sort of, you know, get noticed and the way to also come together, share creative practise, share the experience of maybe multiple marginalisations that people were facing. And the other thing was also, you know, sharing networks and sharing access that you often don't have access to if you are either, you know, I guess it's different when you're a member of a collective and you're a member of, or an employee of an organisation. Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - Those kinda things are separate. So I think flexibility, that kind of shared value, felt like really important to me also when I started, you know, working with, and I think something for funders actually to keep in mind. That's what really struck me, not so much that we don't understand what collectives are or what organised Angarika - Yeah Gophika - You know, non-organisational collectives, but that's what makes it quite powerful, like setting your agendas and being able to respond to current moments as well, that's something that I think I felt was quite important. Angarika - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was something that we were discussing recently in, we had like a reflections meeting and we were talking about is a collective a sum total of the individuals in it, or is a collective that's something that kind of has its own entity? And then there are individuals as well, but it also carries its own history. It has its own body. And because Maraa's been around now for 14 years, so in a lot of people's eyes, we would perhaps come across, even though we articulate ourselves as a collective, for some people, perhaps we come across more of an, as more of an organisation. We're definitely, I mean, it was so funny because earlier we were eligible for a lot of these, for a lot of grants that would support young feminists, but it seems that we are no longer young feminists. So we were just kind of reckoning with, I mean, what it means also to be around for a certain period of time, because while Maraa has kind of maintained that it's shaped by the politics and ideas of the individuals in it, I think after a certain period of time, the collective itself also carries a history and new individuals who are entering also have, I suppose, some amount of responsibility in terms of carrying that identity with care, even if you might choose to change it or question it or challenge it. And I think that's something that we've really sort of, I mean, it makes our working process very slow, but I think something that we really kind of prioritised is a culture of debate and discussion because until everybody's kind of on a consensus or unless somebody's ceded ground, things don't really move. But in that hashing and rehashing is I think where politics are kind of, is kind of shaped. And I think that also helps us in not getting stuck in looking at things in a particular way. So, I mean, that was just a set of reflections that came to mind in light of what we're discussing today. Gophika - You know, when you said that about the young feminist collectives, right, because when you were younger and I was an advisor, with the FRIDA fund, and you know, FRIDA's probably one of the pro, I mean probably the most progressive funder of young feminist movements globally, if I could say. Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - Just in terms of the way they grew and started thinking about core flexible funding for, you know, groups, but then it also made me think as you kind of aged out of the young feminist movement, that why is that core flexible? Like it's only like that assumption that only younger feminists are going to be doing unorg-, like, you know, unregistered, you know, kind small cottage industry type, like organising, because they don't have access to funding. And then the moment you get older and you kind of know the system that you can finally access funding, and I think one of the gaps there is that how are we thinking, even if we are seeing, you know, even if, you know, feminist funders are really offering those, you know, core funding to groups. Angarika - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Gophika - There are still so many other challenges around, you know, moving money around, but then also just a very value that it's, you know, also recognising that, how do you just, how we see issues as a continuum, how do we continue to nurture collectives and not sort of push them in directions that sometimes funding can do? So also the collective recognising their own politics and keep coming back to it and sort of recognising, you know, how much resources do we actually need? Who, you know, who do we want to resource us? Like those kind of questions have come up quite like a lot in my work. And I was wondering if we could then kind of shift a little bit of our conversation into resourcing itself, because I know resourcing is a huge issue, and I wonder if you can tell us about your experience with Maraa and the American furniture company. By the way, I have never, I haven't heard this story, so I'm really curious to hear your story on resourcing, not from like any, like, you know, I guess traditional funder or rights based funder, but tell me about the American furniture company and Maraa. Angarika - Yeah, it was actually, I mean, the thing is something I was also talking about with Bron and Annelise earlier, is that in Maraa, we kind of tried to keep a certain amount of our work non-funded intentionally because, and that's particularly, I think our arts work, because the formal arts sector and the way that it works in India, will not have a place for the kind of work that we're trying to do. We find it quite hierarchal and quite exclusionary, and our arts work is really about challenging the models as much in the art sector as it is in civil society. And it's like a perennial joke in Maraa that all our activist friends think we're too artistic and all our artistic friends think we're too activisty so it's like impossible to find like some kind of a ground where you can actually talk about aesthetics politically and also talk about the aesthetics of politics. This doesn't seem to kinda exist much, but what happened was that we'd been, we run an annual arts festival, we've been running it for the last 14 years and usually it's crowdfunded, so we've kind of like stayed away from ever actually approaching anybody for funding because we felt that the articulations were not meeting the spirit of the jam. And then suddenly out of the blue, this is I think 2015, if I'm not mistaken, at the time, a lot of our work was centred on public space and kind of using public space for artistic expression. And I think our articulation of what public space means is also grown over the years. But at that time, I think we had this slightly naive or optimistic idea that if you hosted events in public space, it would automatically lead to dialogue. But of course, I think over the years now, the inherent violence in public space is something that we're focusing on a lot more. But at that time we were, I mean, very open to kind of thinking about how space and form interact with each other. And I guess there's, I mean, this company they're called Herman Miller and they, Herman Miller, turns out is a really famous architect and furniture designer in, I dunno, long time ago, and he was really interested in designing furniture for public space and also thinking about how office and co-working spaces need not be so formal, and he really felt that the aesthetics of furniture would, in turn, influence working cultures. So I suppose that they found a fit somehow with the work that we were doing and they wrote to us, and we actually had a really, really, really wonderful relationship with them, because the person who was in charge, I mean, they have an India office, so the person who was in charge kind of really made an effort to understand what we were trying to do, because initially when they approached us, we were really wary particularly about taking corporate funding, but they didn't want any branding, which was, I think, tick mark number one. And the second was that they just kind of gave us a certain amount of support and said that, "I mean, other than reporting mechanisms, you can really choose to do what you like with it." And for us, that was really refreshing because it gave us a chance to kind of articulate and express our work on our own terms. And yeah, like you said, bizarre, because not necessarily like the conventional places where one would find funding, but I think that's something that kind of, just to answer, like what you were talking about earlier in terms of resourcing, is something that I think is really crucial for collectives, which is to not necessarily always think that the money is gonna come from traditional sources. And I think a lot of that, from the practitioner's point of view, depends on how many different ways in which are you able to see your work and articulate your work? And so it's not necessary. Like I remember when we were working with community radio, we wanted to apply for a grant around gender, and a lot of the gender grants at that time could not, were just not able to understand why community radio practitioners would be applying for a gender grant, whereas actually 90% of their broadcasts were around gender and farming, gender and health, you know, but it's not a traditional kind of imagination of a group that would apply for a gender grant. Likewise, with arts grants, though now I feel it's changing, because I think the current political moment and the way in which identity politics has asserted itself, I think there are people who are making an effort to bridge these worlds. But I think a lot of it really depends on how you're able to see your own work and the more agile and dynamic you are in that, the more likely you're able to resource yourself in different ways. I mean, a question that we keep asking ourselves is also like, where is capital important and where can one think about other kinds of strategies? So we really, we're hardcore believers in in-kind support. So people who can give us space, can give us food, can give us train tickets. I mean, that side of things, I think, I mean in India, there's a concept called 'jugaad', which is basically, I suppose, how do you say that? Gophika - There's a book about it probably. There's someone wrote a book about it. Angarika - I guess, like thinking on your feet and making things work. Gophika - Yeah. Angarika - And that's something that I think is really important because otherwise it just gets too straight jacketed, not to say that money and funding is not important, it is, but I think there are also other ways in which one can think about what resourcing work means. Yeah. But it would be good also to hear from you about, because you're on the other side of the fence now. Gophika - No, I'm not, actually interesting that you say that, because you know, we took different parts and like we've known each other for the last 10 years. Angarika - That long? Dang yeah. Gophika - Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you joined Maraa at a time where I was sort of entering the formalised, you know, human rights, gender space, you know, always worked in institutions and organisations, but interestingly, never worked for a funder, by the way, still haven't gone into the, but you know, a lot of people who are working with movements like you assume that I am working with funding because I think one of the roles that I try and fulfil is just being a linkage because I kind of understand a little bit more than most folks, the ways in which money moves and that's, you know, as a result of either working with funders, advising funders, and it, I realise that it's a complex space and a lot of the time, Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - it really, you know, you see the end result, which is looking at the applications or the funding cycles. And, you know, there are so many people thinking about how to do this, you know, when to put calls out, who it should reach to. And so I always think about this articulation that you are sharing, you know, like the example of the, of Herman Miller and that, and how sometimes money doesn't, is resourcing is needed at times when it's unexpected, And also like, you know, at times where, you know, ideas come to fruition and groups want to work on things that, you know, may not be urgent in terms of crisis or crisis response, but are sort of like needed in this political moment. So, you know, my work with Kadak was that like it had been many years or where we in India have been governed by this right wing and mean, fascist, government and people were, across the world were sort of reacting to what this moment was, then the Bystander Anthology was a result of that. And interestingly, I was part of a six member editorial team who were bringing together 50 artists, and so I joined the team sort of early, like after the conceptualisation, when we started working through who artists would be, et cetera, and I remember, because I come from this space where I've, you know, worked with funders, maybe worked with different organisations, I thought, "Oh, okay, this is a really great idea and it should really be resourced." And I tried, no lack of trying. Like, you know, I have access. Angarika - Yeah Gophika - More access than most, and it just really struck me, and I remember telling the other editorial, the other members of the editorial, that I was a non-believer that we would be able to raise funding. It was an ambitious funding target and it was based on politics, like paying everyone equitably, making sure all the artists were paid at the international fee because, you know, international comic books, there's a whole like level of funding there, and there's a lot of, you know, it's, there's also issues of race, because you don't see a lot of south Asian creators in that space. Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - And yeah, we crowdfunded. I have to say, one feminist organisation, not even a funder, supported us in the anthology point of view, shout out to you, but like, we also had like Chumbak, which is, you know a, it's a brand, but they, again, they didn't want anything from us and it felt so good. Sometimes it feels so good when people who you don't expect to find your work, like, you know, like find any relation to your work interesting. Like it's very, very heartening, I have to say. Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - Especially to see that kind of support and, you know, we didn't get, we crowdfunded the whole thing on Kickstarter, the entire project, and it made me also think about the broader funding ecosystem. Like, yeah, it's great that we funded it on Kickstarter, but there's also like a structure, a system of inequalities when it comes to funding and we see how much funding there is around and, you know, collectives. And also, I would also say unions, for example, like women at unions now. I'm seeing so many amazing women at unions. We shouldn't have to, shouldn't, I mean, shouldn't have to struggle so much. Gophika - Like that's Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - My kind of observation that why is it such a heavy lift? And of course there are a number of reasons, but like I'm so, I guess cause I don't work for a funder, I don't know, but I just keep thinking "It shouldn't have to be this hard." It shouldn't have to be this hard for those of us who really believe that resources should be redistributed. How can we radically imagine that happening? Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - And especially in a difficult environment, like this is not an easy environment, but how can we begin to start imagining that? So yeah, not a quick question. Angarika - I mean, what you mentioned about kind of being a link or a bridge, I feel like this is so important, because most of the time there are groups that I guess, is that music playing for you? Gophika - It is. Angarika - It's kind of groovy. Angarika - Maybe that's a sign for us to begin wrapping up slowly. But yeah, what I was saying was that there's so many groups that we've come across that who really are doing such radical work in really local context. I mean, definitely there's no access to English or, you know, capital in that sense, but really require the support, and that's something that we have also from the funding universe, been lucky to meet a few people who work in really large organisations, but have been really supportive in terms of finding a way to make it happen. I think a lot of that is political will. And if you can, if you have that, you will move the bureaucracy and you will move the paper and it'll happen. And it's a really important role to play. And it's something that we've kind of been thinking about as well, now that we're not really starting out anymore about how we can kind of play that role for smaller collectives as well, you know, in terms of having been through that same journey and also knowing what one has to guard against, because it's so easy to get co-opted. It's easy for your work to get appropriated. You probably don't have checks and balances in place to prevent that, because you don't even know what it might mean. So something that we've been actually thinking about is how to organise more conversations between collectives and this need not be, for example, only feminist, I mean only gender based collectives or anything like that, but arts collectives, and trying to kind of have conversations on models because something that we've come across is that there are a number of different models. So some people, for example, don't put any funding pressure on the collective. So all members of the collective will do part-time work, wherever it is, and the collective is something that runs in off time and is kind of free from all of those pressures. Other people can model. Angarika - Music again. Angarika - Other people kind of have a 50/50 model and others, like Maraa for example, we all work full-time. And as Gopika mentioned, we do, whether you joined 10 years ago, whether you joined a year ago, everybody in Maraa gets paid equally because I think that's something that often causes a hierarchy. So I think one thing that would be really interesting to do, particularly in the context of the subcontinent, was, would be to organise more conversations where collectives can kind of share with one another as to where they are in that journey and how they've thought through this kind of intersection of politics structure and the form in which they work. Gophika - That's so interesting. I feel like someone should fund it. Not trying to be an accountant here. But what I'm also thinking like, and that sounds amazing and actually having worked with collectives, but also, you know, right now I'm sharing space, like physical space, with a collective, kind of key collective of artists and photographers, and they've also been having conversations about, you know, just questions, just questions you may have about what does it mean to be a collective today? And so I feel like that kind of conversation would be great. And part of that, can I just make a pitch to you, is also talk about funding and also think about Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - how you can be propositional, because progressive funders are there Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - and it's really about the balance of how, of course, you know, taking or, you know, receiving funding is a political choice at the end of the day, but I also think about those who don't even have that choice, right? Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - Who don't even have the ability to choose, "Should we take money or not?" And I mean, the unions that, you know, I've interacted, particularly in Bangalore like the common banker union, the choice is not there, you know, livelihood in working in a union, also collecting membership from workers and things like that. So, and also a lot of informal collectives who never have had the opportunity to give their whole lives to this work, even though like they. Angarika - Yeah. Yeah. Gophika - And so while, you know, I think moving into like advice for funder, advice for collectives and groups, I think that was what we wanted to discuss, you know, the last segment of this, is that, I think like being clear, like as, like I would say to you, because I feel like I'm also talking from a, "what would be great" kind of perspective is sort of seeing, is sort of articulating to funders and allies, funder allies as well, where resourcing can play a role. I think you mentioned this earlier and where, you know, what kind of work and what kind of activities will be fenced away, you know? Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - And funders have to be okay with that. Like they have to be okay with funding a part of your work and you going off and doing something, you know, without funding and without any of these instances. I mean, you did a fantastic project with a trans rights group called Truth Dream, which was crowdfunded. Again, a beautiful project, and you can maybe, I'd love it if you shared a little bit about it as well. And it made me think, "Wow, this would never have gotten funded" but it could have. Like, I was like, "Oh, this is just such a beautiful coming together of activists and artists." And so yeah, I think that political articulation would be good. Angarika - Yeah. Yeah. Actually Truth Dream did get, I mean, partially funded. Gophika - Okay. Angarika - And that's what I meant by organisations who are kind of, I mean, larger funding organisations who have been really supportive. So we did get some amount of support from Fund for Global Human Rights and from the Human Capability Foundation, but yes, a large percentage of it was crowdfunded. And I think that was important in the context of this project to also show community ownership and kind of support for work like this. But I mean, very briefly, Truth Dream was a photo exhibition, which was actually conceptualised by Chandni, who is a very senior transgender activist in Bangalore, and she runs her an organisation called Payana and she wanted to bring together trans-women and trans-men who are above the age of 50 and specifically talk about what beauty and fantasy and ageing means. And she, they wanted to sort of step into a dream, dream sequences and dream scapes, which they were never able to realise in reality, because of the history of the community is marked by begging and sex work and there's violence and exploitation at every, I mean on a daily basis. But this was really a space in which they could explore fantasies. And so, they got in touch with us and they said, I mean, I remember she called us, and she said, "Our only like caveat is that they" we kind of had to do put the whole thing together from scratch. There was a cultural performance. They all wanted to. - [Computer] Mm, I'm having trouble hearing. Angarika - Kind of dress as, they wanted to dress as old Kannada and Tamil film actresses and mythological characters. And I mean, the details of that are there on our Facebook page and our Instagram page, if any of you want to look at it, I mean, have a closer look, but it's interesting that you brought that up because I was just thinking about how some organisations who we know who are much older, like older feminist organisations, older trans rights organisations, are now going through a complete sort of, how do I say, like a reconfiguration, and it links back to what you were saying earlier about why we expect that it's only younger feminists who are doing cutting edge work because a lot of the older generation that we're meeting are so disillusioned with the ways in which they've been caught by certain structures that they've worked in, and I find that there are a lot of collectives forming that, I mean, they're in their 50s and 60s and they're choosing to leave organisations and form their own collectives and finally have freedom and flexibility to do the work that they want to do. So it's really interesting to also plot that graph. Angarika - And I think Gophika - Yes. Angarika - something that, another thing that's really missing, is intergenerational conversations around this. I mean, even within the feminist movement, very tough Gophika - Yeah. Angarika - to have a conversation with older feminists and younger feminists in the same room, and I find both sides are closed and it's really, I mean, that's another thing that I think really needs to be, some space needs to be found for that in order to also talk about how feminist movements can be restructured and supported and sustained, particularly in times like this, where, I mean, it's not just India, it's the story of, I think a majority of countries in the world right now that we are facing fascists and authoritarian regimes, and there is a direct impact on social movements, on activists. I mean, there's killings, there's arrests, so there's actually a lot of things to reckon with. So if there were ways to kind of come together and share also how to work smartly and strategically, because there's no point in being confrontational, there's no point in getting arrested, so how do you kind of do your work in a way that allows you to sustain and not burn out? I mean, we're finding that a lot of people are facing that kind of psychic toll, particularly after COVID. I'm pretty sure it's something you've come across as well because you also work in a larger context than us in terms of south Asia and how people are kind of trying to hold things together. So yeah. Gophika - Yeah. It feels like things are together somehow, but also falling apart. You know what I mean? Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - So it does feel like we're at this moment of really the need to, I think like we really need each other the most right now. Angarika - Yeah. Gophika - You know? Feels like we're in that moment. So we have a couple, only a couple of minutes left, and I wanted to make one last point about, you know, we talked about collectives, we talked about funders, but also the role of registered organisations and registered NGOs. Like in India right now, we are facing quite a difficult scenario where funding is really tight domestically. There's not a lot of progressive, you know, big funding that needs to be there for our social movements, and global funding is tightened because of legal and fiscal regimes that are, you know, pretty much draconian in nature. And so I also feel the need for, you know, the more traditional NGOs, those have been around who have, you know, succeeded in building their organisations and their structures on the funding that was coming in in the 80s and 90s and the early 2000s, like the need for them to also step up and the need for them to also think about how are they supporting collectives and how are they also being more political, not just in the activism that they do, but ensuring that we continue to have diverse social movements, we continue to have more things that aren't, because we're gonna be in a place in 10 years, if we don't do this, where there's no voices of dissent and the ones that exist are probably the only ones that manage to survive, you know? So I dunno, do you have any closing thoughts as well and such? Yeah. Advice to organisations, funders? Angarika - Yeah. I definitely that there is a lot of gate keeping, which is very frustrating, and I think that there has to be a way in which we reimagine what support and what nurturing, like a second line of leadership means, also keeping in mind that thought, probably the time in which politics and I mean, ideas and imaginations of politics has formed in the 80s and 90s, we live in a completely different world now. I mean, there's no point in even making a binary between virtual and offline, you know, in certain cases, like just one example, but I think there is a need in which people, I mean, there is a lot to learn from the older generation and I do feel that consistency, commitment, patience, I think are values that a lot of younger groups could do with, but at the same time I feel, God I feel very old suddenly, but at the same time, I feel it's necessary for older models to open themselves up, and I feel like there's growing frustration, even within organisational kind of structures about the fact that, I mean, it's small things like leadership of organisations are still male dominated. It's still older men. I mean, at most you'll get to a programme manager post and that's it. So this kind of binary between who is conceptualising and who's implementing, for example, is one big thing. So definitely I think more spaces for that. And also I think on thinking about resourcing innovatively, because I feel people often get discouraged because they feel that if you put your eggs in like one or two baskets, it's probably not gonna yield much, particularly right now. So how to kind of think about the different ways in which your work could be supported, monetarily, in kind, and what that means in terms of where it's, I mean, I feel like for a big question is the audiences that you want to reach. Who is this work for and where is it located and how sensitive are you to the ecologies within which you're working? I mean, if you're going to get a grant for like tens and hundreds of lakhs and you're working in an economic context where people are barely making minimum wage, it doesn't make much sense because if you're just gonna create a subset of dependency in that context. So I think just kind of keeping some of these things in mind, we could probably go on and on, but so I guess I don't have closing thoughts just. Gophika - That's fine. We still have some time to talk with the audience, but yeah, I wonder Angarika - Oh great. Gophika - If we should do that now. So, because yeah, we could probably talk all day about this. So I see Bronwyn. Hey Bronwyn. Bronwyn - Hi. Yeah, I think we could talk all day and we do have a bit more time to talk with all of the amazing people who've joined us here and have been listening to your conversation. Thank you so much, both of you for sharing all of your insights. I'm gonna invite people to do a silent round of applause. I just loved the thread throughout that conversation around imagination. And you said, Angarika, about how collectives, it's sort of limited by how your, how dynamic and agile you can be in imagining who you are in terms of where you seek resourcing. I think that also applies to donors and sort of intermediary organisations like mine, IWDA, those bridge builders that you were talking about. We need to expand our imaginations on who's out there doing this kind of political work and go and expose ourselves to the kinds of creative, imaginative, the multitude of different ways that things are being changed out there that don't just look like a cookie cutter NGO, which is the type of organisation which is easy and, you know, standard to fund. So...