Ten years ago, in the heart of Mumbai’s Shakti Mills, an idea began to take shape for Anuradha Parikh — to create a space where art could be free, where conversations mattered as much as performances, and where the city itself could become part of the narrative. That idea became the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Culture. Its name, too, carried a story: it came from the number of the original warehouse and honoured the legacy of the millworkers, a gesture for which the late Datta Iswalkar, the Millworkers’ Union leader, once thanked Anuradha, a moment she still cherishes.
While reflecting on what shaped G5A, Anuradha recalls how her brother and she were taken to Baithaks and to Chabildas to watch Marathi theatre. She remembers growing up at the intersection of art, literature, and music. “When travelling, we would grudgingly wake up to packed schedules of visiting museums, art galleries, parks, planetariums, and places of great learning,” she says. Speaking of the spark behind G5A, she adds something simple yet profound: “Art was life. Life was art.” Rightly so, these words quite lucidly describe the world of G5A.
What began as a single warehouse now stands as one of the country’s most significant cultural spaces, and this year, G5A celebrates a decade of being home to courageous and experimental art. As with any venture, the early years brought with them the ambitions Anuradha held and the challenges she foresaw. In her words, the biggest of these was “To get enough funding to remain independent and sustain the freedom to create and curate conversations and work that sparked the imagination, questioned the status quo, and addressed the many ‘elephants’ in our society.”
Over the years, G5A has evolved through five distinct yet interconnected elements — Warehouse, Forum, cityLAB, Academy, and Imprint, each with its own role in shaping contemporary culture.
The Warehouse is the physical and emotional heart: a space where music, theatre, film, and performance come alive. It houses programs across contemporary art forms while offering a safe and inclusive home for new ideas, bold conversations, and meaningful connections.
The Forum extends this energy further. Here, contemporary and visionary artists bring ideas to life through conversations, rehearsals, workshops, and long runs of their work.
cityLAB takes G5A beyond its walls and into the city. Its initiatives bring together local communities, artists, creative professionals, government, and other stakeholders to build culturally vibrant, inclusive, and resilient neighbourhoods.
The Academy reinforces depth, rigour, and critical consciousness through workshops and courses that spark creativity, innovation, and future thinking within contemporary art practice.
And finally, it’s Imprint, the foundation’s digital literary arts and culture magazine. Each quarter follows a theme, culminating in an annual print edition and a monthly exhibition series that showcases work across diverse mediums, formats, and perspectives.
Across the decade, the foundation has opened its doors to an extraordinary range of artists and collaborators. From the “Should Art” festival to “Live at the Warehouse” sessions that uplift independent musicians, G5A has become a trusted space for artists to take risks, experiment, and evolve. Musicians, poets, filmmakers, and thinkers have used the space not just to perform, but to provoke, to question, and to connect. In many ways, G5A has grown into a community that believes art is not only about creation but also about reflection, dialogue, and continuity.
When asked how G5A compares to her original vision, Anuradha admits that it has far surpassed it and that she is grateful. “I didn’t think too far ahead — as crazy as that must sound. I just knew I had to build this on my own strength and retain the freedom and choice to do justice to my vision,” she says. Perhaps this water-like approach, allowing things to flow and evolve is what gives artists the space to let their own creativity flow freely in G5A.
Now, as G5A steps into its second decade, the vision remains just as fresh. Anuradha hopes to strengthen the art and culture ecosystem by making it more inclusive, collaborative, and transparent, encouraging cross-disciplinary work, building wider partnerships, and continuing to push research and experimentation.
The next chapter aims to deepen relationships with local communities, expand access, and continue blurring boundaries between disciplines, bringing together art, community, ecology, and civic engagement in new and unexpected ways. Anuradha also hints at a new initiative, The G5A Collective, which will be unveiled soon, a new ray of possibility for those whose ways of seeing align with the ethos of G5A.
Ten years in, G5A stands as a reminder of what becomes possible when creativity meets community, when a city gives space to thought, and thought, in turn, gives something back to the city. As it looks ahead, the foundation continues, in Anuradha’s words, to be “a safe space that champions unconventional, experimental, collaborative, and emerging voices who are fearless in interrogating the world, our ecosystem, and form-making.”
