Khayali Pulav: Potluck Dinner

Register by writing an email to firstdraft.first@gmail.com
Friday, 2 May 2025, 18:00

The potluck dinner will be held as an afterlife of a first draft gathering held on 12 April 2025. The gathering invited 26 community-based practitioners from over 12 organisations/practices who converged at Yellow Streets centre in Delhi for a day-long interaction. We responded to the prompt - to bring an edible/non-edible 'ingredient' of what lies at the core of our community practice and its future imaginations.

While having conversations and sharing responses to the prompt, we embroidered, doodled, painted our daydreams/khayals over a ‘Dastarkhān’ - a long table-cloth used in families/communities across Central and South Asia as a traditional dining space for eating food. The dastarkhān that served as a background to our conversations and khayals, will be used to lay food and feast together.

The phrase, Khayali Pulav, often used to put away wild dreams and fantasies, will serve as an invitation to evoke the imaginations and flavours of community building and our common futures. You are invited to bring a dish to share and feast together over the dastarkhān made of conversations and khayals/daydreams, while engaging with and listening to the reflections of the participants from the gathering.

The dastarkhān is made by participants from – SensAble, ⁠Art1st, Women Walk at Midnight, Jeevan Stambh Foundation, Aagaaz Theatre Trust, Delhi Young Artist Forum, Invisible Women (art project), Katkatha Puppet Arts Trust, Yellow Streets, Rafooghar, Artreach India and first draft.

first draft: first draft (2018-) is an artist collective in Delhi, India, creating spaces for coming together and building a commons. It was conceived through pop-up shows of drafts of artworks. In 2021, in response to the pandemic years, it unfolded into ‘gatherings’ as a way to slow down, reflect and create shared, collaborative spaces for intimacies, friendships and mutual support.

Artreach India: Artreach India is an arts education non-profit established in Delhi in 2015, working with artists to enrich the lives of children, youth, and women from marginalised communities in India.

Rafooghar: Rafooghar is an initiative of Compassion Contagion, a collective of an ever-growing team of artists, writers, volunteers and activists. Rafooghar (inspired from the word Rafoogar/ Rafu Gar, needle-worker or a cloth mender) is a safe, creative space for emotional repair, restoration and rejuvenation. We meet every Sunday, in a small room in one of the most marginalized neighbourhoods for ‘sukoon’ and ‘fursat’.

Yellow Streets: We at Yellow Streets focus on strengthening emotional intelligence and building aspirations to drive young minds towards a sustained future using 'Rugby' and allied activities as a medium for change. Working directly with underprivileged communities, primarily with children and young people.