The Sandbox Collective’s co-founders, Nimi Ravindran and Shiva Pathak were recognised with the Goethe Medal in 2022. It is Germany’s highest cultural honour and was awarded to them for their unwavering efforts on behalf of theatre and art in Bengaluru.
What’s it about? The Sandbox Collective’s two women co-founders have created top-notch theatre over the past ten years. They aimed to make theatre more feasible as a career for artists while also being more accessible to the general public by creating a platform for theatre that explores and challenges gender stereotypes and sexual identities.
- Through the Gender Bender Arts Festival, which has been hosted in Bengaluru since 2015, they have established one of the finest spaces for gender and queer art in the nation during the past ten years.
- They have also demonstrated that life in the arts and theatre is challenging but not impossible.
The beginning: The Sandbox Collective was founded in 2013 by Nimi Ravindran, a former journalist and theatre director with more than 20 years of theatrical experience, and Shiva Pathak, an actor and arts manager with 15 years of theatrical experience.
(Image credits: Goethe Institut’s website)