Founded in 2011, the Art For Art (A4A) Foundation is a not-for-profit arts organisation based in New Delhi, founded by Archana Sapra and Pooja Bahri. It was conceived as a platform to nurture and showcase emerging artistic voices in India, particularly those navigating the uncertain transition between formal education and professional practice. Over the past decade, A4A has supported artists through exhibitions, workshops, mentorship programs, and collaborative projects, often stepping in where institutional infrastructure falls short.

This publication reflects on that journey, exploring how mentorship can transform artistic growth, particularly in environments where formal structures are absent or fragile. It draws from field experience, dialogue, and research to offer insight into alternative, community-rooted models of learning. In keeping with its ethos, the website is hosted on a solar-powered Raspberry Pi server. It is intentionally slow, intentionally minimal, and available only when the sun permits. Like mentorship itself, it values presence over performance, sustainability over speed.

This project began with a question we’ve been circling for years:

How do we move from education to practice in the arts?
And what does it take to bridge that in-between space?

As an artist, educator, and co-founder of A4A, I’ve seen the deep impact that mentorship can have on emerging artists, especially in places where institutional support is uneven. After several editions of our Residency program, we felt compelled to pause and reflect.

Why did three months of guided engagement leave such a lasting imprint on our mentees?

Why did mentors, too, describe the experience as transformative?

What was happening in this small, intense container that wasn’t happening elsewhere?

This report is my attempt to begin answering those questions — not to arrive at fixed conclusions, but to trace a map of experiences, patterns, and provocations. It draws from exit interviews, dipstick surveys, informal conversations, and collaborative research. It is a document in motion — one i hope to add to with every residency cycle, and one that may also contribute to broader conversations on pedagogy, policy, and care in the arts.

But this isn’t just about the content.
It’s also about where that content lives — and how it’s served.

There is a quiet irony at the heart of this work:

A project about sustainability and slowness was assembled with the help of high-energy AI tools trained on massive data centres. That something powered by the sun was made possible by a machine that likely consumes more electricity in a second than our entire server does in a day.

But perhaps that contradiction is not a flaw — it’s the very point.

This server, like mentorship, is an attempt to do something meaningful with limited means.

To ask: what if we built systems that were small, specific, and personal?
What if we could publish slowly, deliberately, and still reach others?
What if infrastructure itself became part of our artistic process?

This is my attempt — humble, hopeful, and unfinished.