It was a carefully planned and fairly full schedule that focused on using the platform to link with important British institutions and professionals, besides facilitating some creativity in a more relaxed and pressure free atmospherics. We were keen to see something of the current British art practice and also show them something of ours. The camp diary included structured visits and meetings as well as open slots to do ones own thing or follow any leads developed during the earlier sessions or to stay in doors and paint or go sightseeing or shopping. Discussions and meetings with some of the curators at thevarious centres and collections built into the action packed programme included visits to the Tate Modern, British Museum, Courtauld Institute, inIVA, White Cube and ICA amongst others. And the weekend away amidst expansive greens in the English countryside at Down Hall was time for the group to think, relax, enjoy, meditate, draw, sketch and paint.

The party began with a sneak preview of the work by Sitaaray group of camping artists at Chor Bizarre India's Art Gallery in the presence of a large gathering of who's who of London, followed by numerous other social and cultural occasions to party and meet British experts, collectors, leaders of Indian community in Britain and the media under the personal care and expert hospitality of the team at Old World Hospitality (OWH) during the 7-day residency. Our stay in London was booked at the centrally located luxurious Washington Mayfair Hotel owned by people of Indian origin the Sangers, where a Bollywood film team and Santoor player Rahul Sharma were also staying, immediately made us feel at home and good.

The programme started off with a bang straight after our arrival with a visit to the Royal Academy to take in two important exhibitions Modigliani and His Models at The Sackler Wing of the galleries and a large show of Rodin in the main galleries, the latter curated by well known art historian and my friend Catherine Lampert whom we met later at the Tamarai launch party. The indepth research and the exquisite display of a substantial body of work sourced from private and public collections in different parts of the world that helped to make these shows into landmark projects impressed us all.

At the Courtauld Institute of Art at Somerset House we saw some of the be-jeweled Tiffanys and the Gilbert Collection besides other important old masters' works under the expert guidance of Dr Deborah Swallow, Dr Barnaby Wright and their colleagues following an introductory brief on the history and plans of the institute that was specially arranged for us. With the image of Goddess Durga happily installed in the Great Court at centre of the British Museum as a part of Voices of Bengal project it was clearly an Indian season with its diverse culture and vibrant art writ large all over the prestigious museum precincts including some of the inside galleries with a select display from Museum's unparalleled collection of Hindu and Muslim scrolls and never-before-seen paintings by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. Richard Blurton the curator of the exhibition personally received and briefed the group while we also met the artisans and musicians from West Bengal who had been invited by the British Museum to help with the show.

The multi media exhibition Leonardo DaVinci- Experience, Experiment and Design at the Victoria & Albert Museum was a special experience as was anescorted visit for a sneak view of their Indian collection in the stores that included an amazing work of fellow artist Jogen who was with us at the camp. Their curators Mariom Rosser-Owen took us around the Jameel Gallery while Divia Patel guided us through the Nehru Gallery.

At Tate Modern the group was met by curators Catherine Wood and Stuart Comer who gave us a brief over view of the Tate Modern's programming strands and an introduction to their collection displays followed by a visit to their exhibition Kandinsky: The Path to Abstraction with an overview of the artist's journey from landscape painter to a modernist master, with a radically abstract language. The British art show under the intriguing title How to Improve the World- 60 years of British Art, Arts Council Collection at the Hayward offered an interesting over view of the country's contemporary art scene. The avantgarde minimal art on display at the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) did not seem to enthuse the group much, though the informality of the ICA space and its appeal for the youth was highlighted in the introductory meeting we had with its Managing Director Guy Perricone. The lunch in their café was certainly good for us famished and tired lot.

Dr. Augustus Casley-Hayford, Director of inIVA (Institute of International Visual Arts) very kindly hosted a working lunch for our group to which he had also invited curators and experts from other galleries around. It was here that we discovered much to our surprise that their otherwise well stocked library on global art scene had hardly any books or catalogues on Indian art. I have since our return with Anjolie's support and inputs from a couple of galleries arranged to put together and send to London a small collection of recent books on Indian art for their library which hopefully will help fill the gap.

The Hoxton area of East London in close vicinity of inIVA with several avant-garde art centres and galleries had an interesting range of new and experimental work on display. We found the installation of an assembled car and an experiential performance art project that invited the visitors to lie on a bed listening to music at Rich Mix centre, particularly fascinating. It was here that we also met Keith Khan, a well-know expert on multi-cultural arts and Director of the centre. Escorted by Cary Sawhney we visited several galleries in the area that had a dominant play of digital, video and conceptual art side by side with others such as Flowers East, Hales Gallery and other spaces on Portobello Road asserting a parallel re-emergence of paintbrush and pencil in British art today. It was wonderful to see hoards of general public lining up at these and other venues to buy tickets to see many of the shows.

The weeklong programme also included a range of other engagements and visits to make it a worthwhile and wonderful experience for all. The gala opening party at Tamarai one evening when the great and the good of British and Asian community were there to meet the visiting artists was fun. The lavish Turkish dinner at art deco Sarastro Restaurant was an experience as was the visit to the Cambridge Theatre to see a performance of Chicago at the West End in London! The solo exhibitions of Nayanaa Kanodia's work at Chor Bizarre India's Art gallery and Satish Gupta's at Tamarai that followed the Sitaaray group preview show offered more opportunities to showcase Indian art and meet more people. All these diverse experiencesand special events added to the creative sparks around the camp.