**Pooja Dhingra, Curator and Creative Director**

About the Manifesto for the Future

Compassion Contagion was created as an online archive to document acts of compassion, solidarity and resilience during the pandemic through art, collages and graphic narratives. We are a collective of ever growing team of artists, writers, volunteers and activists who believe in the the power of art, activism and storytelling to shift the narrative from despair to that of hope. In the first phase of Compassion Contagion, we curated deeply researched stories on the themes of gender, mental health and well being, animal rights, right to food and nutrition, interfaith bridges and voices from the margins. The second phase of our project- The Manifesto for the Future aims to shine light on alternate, local, sustainable models of development and the power of conscious collectives that are reclaiming dignity, democracy and economic control. We believe that solidarities and collectivisation in both rural and urban landscapes can disrupt the power structures and the capitalist model of development and can lead us towards an alternate, compassionate future.

Co-Curators- Manifesto for the Future

Ashik Krishnan

Ashik is a traveller and venture-socialist, an advocate of conversation, using dialogue as a tool to explore human emotions and build consciousness in a world that is turning highly transactional. He is the co-creator of Travellers' University, a learning community to facilitate individuals who are interested to travel and learn to deepen their knowledge and understanding of themselves and the world, and are looking for alternative choices in Education. He is also the co-creator of many community-centric initiatives such as Learning City Thrissur and Keeday.

Rubina Singh

Rubina’s current practice is a reflection of over a decade of experience in human rights work in the Indian subcontinent. Being trained in Law as well as Design, she enjoys bringing together these two passions with rights-based textual textiles while also engaging with the subversive feminist histories of embroidery and her inherited love of the craft of ‘Phulkari’. Presently, her work is exhibited as a part of the Kochi Biennale Educational Programmes and at The Greve Museum, Denmark (2020-21).

Contributors- Manifesto

**Ritika Chawla**
Ritika is passionate about words and believes in their transformative power. She recently completed her Master’s in Sociology from Ambedkar University, Delhi. She is interested in intersections of Psychology and Sociology, agency and structures and in imaging a better, more just world. Before this, she has worked with non-profits in urban and rural India, in the education and environment sectors. Ritika takes refuge in reading fiction, traveling and being radically hopeful of a better future.

**Yuvan Aves**
Yuvan is a writer, naturalist, educator and activist based in Chennai. His interests include reimagining an Earth-centric and child-centric education in schools, the reciprocity between languages and ecologies, and ground-up processes of change and politics. He writes on topics at the intersection of ecology, education, and human/more-than-human consciousness. He is the author of two books, recipient of the M.Krishnan Memorial Nature Writing Award and the Sanctuary Asia Green Teacher Award. He is currently traveling and documenting stories of biodiversity, people and change along the Indian coastline.

**Arnaz Khan**
Arnaz is an independent writer, editor and conscious-media professional. At the Centre for Education and Documentation, she strives to create a slow knowledge module. She has been an active alumni of The Blue Ribbon Movement since the past 6 years. Among many experiments with media, she's lead two batches of Media Lab Fellowships, mentored three batches of the Yes Foundation's Media for Change fellow, been a panelist on South Asian Youth Peace Conference's panel on The Role of Media in Social Change.

**Bhawna Jaimini**
Bhawna Jaimini is a writer and urban practitioner based in Mumbai. She trained as an architect and spent five years drinking chai and chasing camels in Kutch, Gujarat. Now based out of Mumbai where she works on projects to improve the built habitat of people on the margins. She is deeply passionate about gender rights and believes in wearing her politics on her sleeve. She writes about culture and politics but likes to trespass into the landscape of poetry and literary essays once in a while.

**Usha**
Usha has MA in Economics and is also an embroidery artist, a homemaker and a lover of plants, food and books. She enjoys listening to interviews and transcribing then as she gets to learn a lot just by listening to people.

**MJ Neela**
MJ Neela is an independent Editor based in New Delhi. She has earlier worked as content writer for Blue Apple Technologies, and coordinating editor for six South Delhi colonies, at Community Samvada. In between, she has done freelance writing for Amrita Bharati Publications and editing services for Princeton Review India (now Manya Education) and others. Neela has completed an MPhil in Environmental Politics (School of International Studies, JNU) and is deeply interested in human-environment interactions.

**Keshbati Netam**
Keshbati is currently a first year student of Bachelors in Commerce at N.R.M Government Girls College. She has been a member of Chinhari:The Young India since 2018. She frequently writes in the Chinhari newsletters.

**Urvashi Neha**
Urvashi is working as a researcher at Chinhari: The Young India. She has been working on models of horizonal, organizational structures. She is currently studying organizational behavior within Human Resource Management.

**Sangita Jogi**
Sangita Jogi, a homemaker and a young artist from Rajasthan’s Sirohi district is a second generation practitioner of the Jogi art- a tribal art form that features folk through drawings and etchings. Sangita started drawing when she was a child, heavily influenced by her parents who were nomadic musicians in Rajasthan before becoming artists.

**Subhash Vyam**
Subhash Vyam is a Pardhan-Gond artist from Madhya Pradesh who after his initial forays in clay and wooden sculpture began to practice the Pardhan-Gond tradition of stippled painting. He was awarded the Rajya Hastha Shilpa Puraskar by the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 2002. He likes using the colour black and often uses ink on paper as his medium. His favourite themes are of aquatic life, which he saw while growing up in the village of Sonpuri, near Patangarh.

**Studio ArtBole**
Studio ArtBole engages with rural artists and is a space of creative learning, open dialogue & collaborative painting around lived experiences. Founded by **Avinash Karn**, an artist from Ranti village, Madhubani, Bihar – the ancient region of Mithila where women have been practicing the ritual art of painting for a long time, the studio has chosen to take up Madhubani's eloquent art form to greater heights.

**Vayeda Brothers**
Mayur and Tushar, are artists from the indigenous Warli community who were born and still live in Ganjad, 80 miles from Mumbai in India. The brothers paint traditional fables, as well as stories they have gathered by recording local oral histories and seek to explore new avenues for the historically coded tradition of Warli art to move this ancient tradition forward, without diluting its essence.

**Amrita Das**
Painting was a subject which attracted Amrita since childhood and in 2004 she joined the Mithila Art Institute. She loves to draw sketches on contemporary issues and women empowerment. Her debut children’s book ‘Hope is a Girl selling Fruit’ is a huge success and has inspired Amrita to continue her journey as an art devotee .

**Sher Singh Bhabhor**
Sher Singh Bhabhor is a Bhil artist from Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh. He learnt painting from his mother, Bhuri Bai, at the age of seven. By 15, he was drawing on canvas and had developed his own unique colour palette.

**Manu Chitrakar**
Manu Chitrakar is a Pattachitra artist from West Bengal and has been painting since the age of 15. He loves to depict social issues in his work and has travelled all across India and to Sweden and Paris showcasing his work.

**Roshni Bhatia**
Roshni is an artist and art therapist based in Bangalore. Her art practice is process led with an emphasis on intuition as a tool, in communicating an uncensored part of the *self*. As an art therapist Roshni works with children and adolescents with histories of complex trauma. She is the Co-founder FoundSpace Collective that works towards expanding the boundaries of therapeutic spaces through a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary collaboration of the arts and mental wellness.

**Annie Hazarika**
Annie is an artist, illustrator, animator and an actor from Guwahati, Assam. She has been trained in traditional arts ( water colour, charcoal and oil paintings) but has gravitated more towards digital arts. Some of her clients include Bacardi NH7 Weekender, Unicef and Ministry of Railways. She often uses her art to put spotlight on the culture of the Northeast of India.

**Wamika**
Wamika is a recent graduate in Sociology and passionate about social work. She has been working in the field since 2014 and continues to do so. She strongly advocates Dalit rights and believes that true revolution can only come through the Ambedkarite movement and by dismantling the caste system in the country. Other than that, Wamika likes to spend her free time reading, watching a lot of Netflix and cuddling with her cat. She also loves growing house plants and find her serenity in them.

Compassion Contagion was started by a team of an artist and an activist to record acts of compassion during the pandemic through stories, art, collages and graphic narratives. In these times of despair, we feel that it is extremely essential to document stories of solidarity, of connection in the time of social distancing, of lifting someone’s spirits up or helping someone grieve, of healing and being healed, of cooperation, courage, compassion and hope.

Pooja Dhingra, Artist

Pooja is an independent conceptualiser and a graphic designer and has previously worked with Play Clan as a creative lead. As a freelancer, she has designed for non profits such as National Foundation for India; Pravah; Barefoot College,Tilonia; Apnalaya; Room to Read; Communities for Conservation, WNCB: Work:No Child’s Business; PSBT to name a few. She has worked on projects that address the issues of discrimination and social exclusion, campaigns designed to address early and child marriage, child labor, women’s nutrition, health and reproductive rights of adolescent girls. Her personal work revolves around waste management, sustainability, and addressing the patriarchy through humour and satire. Her work has been featured in the Ladies finger, Asian Age, The Better India, Khirkee Voice-Khoj Foundation and in British Council’s campaign ‘She Leads’ as one of their most favourite women creators from India.

Nida Ansari, Activist

Nida is a development consultant, youth worker; who’s worked with shelter homes, state juvenile detention centres for youth at risk; and has an extensive experience (Pravah),in design, execution of curricula, programmes and training with youth, teachers, professionals, youth workers, in schools, colleges, organisations, sectors; national and international including communication, fundraising strategies, campaigns. She’s worked closely with people’s movements on workers, students, farmer rights and recently in nation-wide community led protests against the NRC and CAA with CSOs in protests like the Shaheen Bagh protest, relief work in the North-East Delhi pogrom. During the pandemic, she has been involved in civil society relief operations and resource generation for Mazdoor Kitchen, a citizen run community kitchen in North Delhi, running since May 2020.