Arts Practices for Inclusion^TM (API) is an interdisciplinary approach that uses diverse art forms—such as drama, music, movement, visual arts, and play—to foster inclusion, psychosocial well-being, and deeper human connection across communities. Over the past decade, Arts Practices for Inclusion^TM (API) has evolved through sustained engagements across diverse contexts working with individuals, communities, and organisations in India and beyond. 

There is already deep, meaningful work happening across the disability and social sector with organisations holding communities, building access, and creating pathways for care and participation.

With a growing network of practitioners and the completion of 10 cohorts of the API training programme, a clear direction has emerged: The need is not to start something new, but to co-create, share practices, and deepen what already exists

The API Maharashtra Project (2026–27) is a step in this direction.

It marks a shift towards co-partnering, co-locating, and regionalising this work, building context-driven models that can serve as pilots for expansion across other regions in India.

API Maharashtra Contact Sessions

The first Contact Session brought practitioners from across the 11 organisations together for an immersive residential learning experience across movement, music, visual arts, drama and play at our campus in Bengaluru (July 2026). The session moved beyond arts-based activities towards deeper questions of participation, belonging, agency, relationships and organisational culture. By the end of the session, practitioners had begun connecting their learning to their own organisational contexts, with each organisation developing a context-specific Action Design Lab, a small, self-designed experiment to take the API approach back into their own work.