Foundations & Trusts · Established 2003
Art is not a luxury but a civic necessity
Founded in memory of Shri Krishnachandra B. Lahoti, the Krishnakriti Foundation carried a family tradition of educational and medical philanthropy into a third field: art and culture. It runs Hyderabad’s oldest annual arts festival, sends young Indian artists to study in France, and puts art on the walls of the city itself.
Why It Exists
For close to a century the Lahoti family’s philanthropy had run in two channels: education and medicine. Schools, colleges and a polytechnic across Marathwada and Hyderabad–Karnataka; wards and equipment at the Gandhi and Osmania hospitals; later an eye centre in Hyderabad.
In 2003 a third channel opened. The Krishnakriti Foundation was established as the non-profit arm of Kalakriti, in memory of Shri Krishnachandra B. Lahoti — father of Prshant Lahoti, and a man remembered for his sense of community and his attachment to Hyderabad.
The Foundation’s working belief is that art is not a luxury but a civic necessity — a force for community, identity and connection between generations.
That belief shapes what it does. Almost everything the Foundation runs is free to attend, sited in public space, or aimed at people who would not otherwise get near it — students without means, artists without a platform, and a city whose cultural life had long been under-served relative to its history.
Every January Since 2004
The Foundation’s best-known work, and one of Hyderabad’s oldest and most distinctive annual cultural events. The first edition was held in January 2004. It has run every January since, across four to five days at the start of the year, and it is free and open to all.
Each edition is built around a distinct curatorial theme, with twenty to thirty events spread across the festival days, and draws upwards of five thousand visitors. The 2018 edition took mapping and cartography as its theme, drawing on the collection of the Kalakriti Archives and staged in collaboration with Bonjour India.
Over two decades it has become a fixture of India’s art calendar — a platform where emerging artists, young curators and heritage specialists work alongside established names, on a programme that keeps Hyderabad’s own culture and history at its centre. Hindustani vocalist Rashid Khan has performed; scholars including William Dalrymple, Alka Pande and Ranjit Hoskote have spoken.
Exhibitions
Established and emerging artists shown alongside the Kalakriti Archives — historic maps, vintage photographs and rare prints brought into conversation with contemporary practice.
Performance & Talk
Hindustani classical recitals, theatre and poetry, seminars and panel discussions, book launches and film screenings.
Participation
Heritage walks through the old city, hands-on workshops from puppet-making to printmaking, and open photography competitions.
Scholarships & Exchange
The Foundation supports dozens of students each year with financial and material assistance. Its most distinctive programme is the Krishnakriti French Scholarship, run in partnership with the Embassy of France in India.
For over a decade it has funded residencies and study for promising Indian fine-arts students at leading institutions in France — fully funded, and aimed at students for whom such an opportunity would otherwise be out of reach.
This is the strand that eventually outgrew the Foundation. The relationship with the French Embassy, built through the scholarship and through the cultural work that earned Prshant Lahoti the Chevalier in 2012, was formalised in August 2017 as a separate body — the Franco-Indian Educational Trust — publicly launched during the French President’s state visit the following year.
Year-Round Work
The festival occupies one month. The rest of the year the Foundation works in public space and in places art rarely reaches — murals and installations across the city, art camps in Telangana’s prisons, heritage walks, and community cultural programmes.
Street Art
The street art project that turned a Hyderabad neighbourhood into an open-air gallery.
Public Installation
A landmark city installation, and one of the Foundation’s most widely photographed works.
Urban Art
Mosaic mural and sculpture projects delivered with IKEA India, taking art into everyday infrastructure.
Community
Art camps run inside Telangana’s prisons — the quietest and least visible of the Foundation’s programmes.
Continue
The Parent
The gallery, the archives, ArtCafe and the Foundation — the cultural enterprise this sits inside.
Kalakriti India →Official Site
Festival programmes, schedules and edition archives, published each season.
krishnakriti.in ↗Trust Overview
How the three charitable bodies relate to one another, from the 1956 will to the present.
kalakriti.in ↗