Vision

Budhan Stories is a community-led platform for filmmaking, performance and research that works to make visible the lives and voices long pushed to the margins of public life. It brings together artists, activists and researchers from De-Notified Tribes (DNTs), Adivasi, Dalit, Muslim and other marginalised communities, using art as a form of knowledge, resistance and expression that challenges exclusion in the public sphere.

Budhan Stories began during the pandemic as a collaboration between Budhan Theatre and its associated film company Nomad Movies and a network of researchers, artists and activists in India and beyond. Since then, it has supported young storytellers from marginalised backgrounds to become filmmakers and cultural producers in their own right.

Its films and performances blend fiction and documentary, theatre, song and poetry, creating a living archive of indigenous presence against erasure. This ongoing work now shapes the Nomad School of Film and Performing Arts - the first institution led by and dedicated to the creative vision of India’s marginalised communities.

At a time of shrinking civic space, the school extends Budhan Stories’ vision into a long-term structure for learning, collaboration, and community-led art, building sustainable spaces for storytelling, performance and research.