When Smriti Nagpal was 23, she met Amit Vardhan, an artist with hearing loss, who worked for an NGO. He had earned a Masters Degree in Art from the College of Arts, in the city, but had found no avenues to use it for his livelihood. The meeting, now six years ago, inspired her to start Atulyakala, an initiative to bridge this gap, and give artists with speaking and hearing impairment a platform to showcase and sell their work. Smriti’s own experience with her siblings, both hearing impaired fed into her understanding of the problem. Fashioned as India’s “first deaf-run lifestyle brand”, Atulyakala facilitates its employees to contribute to society and break any able-ist stereotypes.
She began sourcing products and connecting with people at the design-school level. “These schools had reservation for those with deafness. I was able to find them in 70% of the art schools I had heard of. Also, I had access to the communities and groups built by them, because of my siblings. So I put the word out in these groups, which really helped us,” she says.
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Nagpal, who earned her master’s degree in Social Innovation and entrepreneurship from The London School of Economics and Political Science in 2018, hires people specific to different job profiles in Atulyakala. There are sketching artists and graphic designers, among others. It also welcome interns or volunteers who want to learn the Indian Sign Language (ISL), and be part of this community. Atulyakala has also put up stalls and kiosks at many big-ticket events like the Jaipur Literature Festival, The Lil Flea and Horn Ok Please in Delhi.
Now, their upcoming pop-up and sign language session aims to unite retail and ISL learning sessions, under one roof. The session will be conducted by one of their employees, and is open to all.
Smriti, who joined the National Association of the Deaf when she was 16, says, “I never wanted our decisions to be based on charity. A bigger challenge is that charity has been associated with sympathy – these people do not need it. They can offer you amazing products that you can buy.”
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