Everyday Leaders for Imagined Futures
This documentary workshop invites participants to rethink the concept of leadership through reflection, and collective inquiry. In the workshop we will explore what makes an effective leader, challenging the status quo of power brokers and authoritarian figures and instead focus on everyday leaders. The leaders who might perhaps use equitable practices, frameworks of justice, openness to dissenting voices and radical listening to move communities forward.
Participants are encouraged to bring “documents” (materials) with examples of everyday leaders they have encountered. It could be photos, texts, audio, of someone in their family, village, neighborhoods, stories in folklore, in myth, or heard rumors or songs about, or seen Instagram posts, reels, what’s app forwards, Facebook posts, read in textbooks, magazines, journal entries, research papers, witnessed on the streets—that represent local leaders who have inspired them, whether through community action or subtle, steadfast guidance or displayed creative means of leadership. By spotlighting these often-overlooked figures, we aim to broaden our understanding of impactful leadership.
In addition to local examples, together we will uncover the stories and struggles of lesser-known leaders from the Global South. By engaging with their experiences, participants will gain insights into different models of leadership and the diverse ways individuals can effect change within their communities.
Using documentary performance techniques, participants will draw imaginative connections between personal histories and larger socio-political narratives. This process will allow us to probe how individual experiences can annotate, reinterpret, and even transform official histories, challenging dominant narratives and redefining the impact of our times.
The workshop will culminate in a multi-layered performance that reframes what it means to lead or what our imagination of the future of leadership is. Through the workshop, we will explore a few questions:
- What does effective leadership look like in different social, political, personal, ecological and religious contexts?
- What is the impact of quiet leaders in relation to those with strident voices?
- How do personal experiences shape our understanding of leadership and history?
Through the register of artistic inquiry, this workshop aims to co-create a vision of leadership grounded in restorative practices, justice, equity, and community-driven change. The hope is that audiences and participants will leave with a renewed perspective on what it means to lead and the power of individual and collective action.
Workshop Details
- This workshop is open to participants currently based in Nepal only.
- The workshop can take a minimum of 9 and a maximum 25 participants.
- The workshop is open to performance artists, lawyers, archivists, coders, documentary filmmakers, teachers, students, artists, non-artists, dancers, visual artists, sound artists, curators, scientists, activists, journalists, researchers, and historians. Folks interested in playing with form and ideas around the photographic document and imagining artistic annotations and interventions.
- Language for instruction, conversations and reading/listening/watching material will primarily be English with limited Nepali translation support.
- The workshop will take place in person, and participants will be asked to commit to all days.
- 4 hours and 30 minutes per day in person ( 12 noon to 4:30 p.m. with a 20-minute break.
- No prior experience in performance needed. The workshop will draw upon varied skills and practices of participants.
- Important: Not all participants may get an opportunity to perform, however each one will be involved in making, writing, visual design, technical design, editing, and other varied aspects of making a live performance based on their interest and inclination.
- Participation fee is NPR 8000 – this is meant to cover daily meals. Please indicate in your application if you require a fee waiver.
- Light refreshments will be provided during workshop days.
- Participants will be asked to collect/present documents that relate to this everyday leader, to share with the group and that can be used in the final show. This document or material can be photos, texts, audio, textbooks, magazines, journal entries, research papers, Instagram posts, reels, WhatsApp forwards, Facebook posts. These everyday leaders can be someone in your family, village, neighborhood, friend circle, from the past or present, or people you may have heard in folklore, in myth, or in songs or rumours or whisper networks.
Detailed Timeline
| 17 October, Friday | Application Deadline |
| 20 October, Monday | Participants selection |
| 27 October, Monday | Introduction (Anuja sharing practice + participants share their material + one line about the material, what and why) |
| 28 October, Tuesday | – Exercise 1 introduction to space, bodies, each other – Radical Listening exercise + Debrief – Working with silence, gaze, taking space, owning time. – Six Questions and how do we re-tell other’s stories? Exercise from the book Documentary Theatre In India, Assembling Publics, Performing Politics (eds Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tuchmann) |
| 29 October, Wednesday | – Coloured Votes- from the book Documentary Theatre In India, Assembling Publics, Performing Politics (eds Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tuchmann) – How would I like to be remembered/ Writing our own eulogies. – Sifting through each other’s material. – Narrativizing materials and finding connections. |
| 30 October, Thursday | – Manifesto writing – Looking at an event like the Bandung Conference and other examples of leaders from the Global South. See if there are resonances with material that participants have brought. |
| 31 October, Friday | – Creating visual representations of how we imagine the shape(s) of these everyday leaderships to play out. – Creating an embodied sculpture of systems/leadership structure we imagine collectively. – Start finalising materials and the concrete forms it can take. |
| 1 November, Saturday | Day Off (Assign roles and responsibilities/writing/editing/performing using some of the leadership characteristics we have gathered) |
| 2 November, Sunday | – Square boxes exercise to create the structure for the performance. It is an exercise from the book Documentary Theatre In India, Assembling Publics, Performing Politics (eds Anuja Ghosalkar and Kai Tuchmann) – Building narrative order, structure within boxes and in multiple one minute rhythms. |
| 3 November, Monday | Finalise narratives + images + assign roles and responsibilities |
| 4 November, Tuesday | Rehearsals- we work with tech design + performance simultaneously. We break into smaller groups, work on assigned tasks and gather to see if and how it fits together. |
| 5 November, Wednesday | Rehearsals (same as above) |
| 6 November, Thursday | Rehearsals (same as above) |
| 7 November, Friday | Rehearsals (same as above) |
| 8 November, Saturday | Final tweaks before open rehearsals |
| 9 November, Sunday | Open Rehearsals + Feedback from invited guests |
| 10 November, Monday | Incorporating feedback + Rehearsal |
| 11 November, Tuesday | Rehearsal |
| 12 November, Wednesday | Tech Check at Venue/Tech rehearsal |
| 13 November, Thursday | Tweaks and changes keeping tech challenges/learnings in mind |
| 14 November, Friday | FINAL SHOW |
About the Facilitator
Anuja Ghosalkar is a performance maker and founder of Drama Queen, a documentary theatre company in India since 2015. Her multi-disciplinary practice extends the idea of theatre to create audacious work. She combines performance, visual arts, and critical inquiry, focusing on little histories, archival lapses, counter-narratives, and questions around gender and transnational collaborations. Based in Bangalore, Ghosalkar’s work has been showcased globally, from the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, the University of Hong Kong, and Meta Lab at Harvard, to Frascati, Amsterdam, and venues such as Hebbel am Ufer and Sophiensale in Berlin.
She has collaborated with award-winning theatre companies like Gob Squad Collective and Flinnworks. Ghosalkar’s writing has featured in publications by Routledge, Bloomsbury Publishing, Narr Francke Attempto and BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies. Her latest co-edited book is titled Documentary Theatre in India: Assembling Publics, Performing Politics, published by Transcript, Germany.
Application Process
To apply for this workshop, please submit the following via this google form:
https://forms.gle/k5EbCr4ui3imHuHo8
In the form you will be asked to submit the following:
A 200-300 statement about a leader who you respect (someone in your neighborhood, community, college etc) and how and why they embody the forms of leadership we need today.
Application Deadline: 17 October 2025
Cover Photo: Parijat, one of the most popular writers in Nepali history and widely recognised for her contributions to the modernist movement in Nepali literature, amidst mass. Deeply shaped by the international feminist movement, Parijat used her writings to inspire feminist commentaries in Nepal.
Vinaya Kasaju Collection/Nepal Picture Library
If you have any questions or concerns, please write to us at mail@photoktm.com or contact Sagar Chhetri at 9808380219 (whatsapp).