Sushruti Santhanam

Sushruti Santhanam founded Dakshina Dvaraka Foundation in 2015, to foster research in performing arts and traditional crafts, archival work, support communities of traditional artists and artisans and mentor younger researchers who want to work with traditional creative communities. Sushruti brings together three very different worlds of inquiry and practice with a doctoral degree in History, a deep and long engagement with artists and artisan communities across India and her own Carnatic music practice since early years. She has trained intensively as a vocalist in Carnatic music, in the rigorous Gurukula system, under her mother, Sangita Kalanidhi Smt. R. Vedavalli and she currently performs, teaches and works out of Pune. Studying Indian arts and crafts as knowledge systems, her special focus has been on building a perspective on 'tradition' as an epistemic space. Hence, while her working experience is with music, she engages with all areas of traditional creative space. Art as a knowledge system, craft as social design and critical perspectives on heritage are some of the themes that she has written and spoken about. She is a visiting faculty at the Interdisciplinary School of Sciences, University of Pune, an IKS mentor of the AICTE- GOI and has been a teaching cohort at the Design Technology and Innovation School at IIT Delhi. The Goh Bugun Project emerged from Sushruti’s long term study of the encounters between tradition and contemporary social contexts. As the project director she steers the planning and execution of the project, ideating and balancing between the various stakeholders and interests.