About the Project

For lakhs of students in India (and across the world), the benefits of arts education remain an abstract luxury – something they will never experience, let alone understand its potential. This is especially true for disabled students from historically and socioeconomically marginalized communities, who face a double burden: the barriers created by poverty, and an education system that writes off their creative abilities. 

These are not observations in isolation, as statistics speak volumes about the state of creative education across the globe. The World Economic Forum clearly highlights how traditional methods of rote learning and memorisation will leave at least 250 million children in the public education system underprepared to enter the workforce, due to factors beyond their control (Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford). Along with this, in most Indian states, there is a gap of up to 40 percentage points between disabled and non-disabled students in access to quality education and literacy (JAMA Network). We should also remember that when schools are under-funded, arts and creative education programs are almost always the first to be cut.

This reality inspired SPACES (Sensitization Programmes, Arts and Creative Education for Students). At SPACES, we believe that creative expression is not a privilege – it is a necessity for well-being, development, and inclusion. And we have one humble goal: to dismantle the barriers to equitable arts education, transforming limited opportunities into limitless possibilities.