About Shillim Institute
The Shillim Institute, a private, not-for-profit educational facility in the Western Ghats of India is dedicated to conservation, sustainable development and healing. It seeks to understand the relationship between human civilization and ecology and provides programs to translate that knowledge for use by academics, businesses and policy makers alike.
Our Upcoming Programs
The Shillim Collective
The key outcome of this program is to build a road map for pursuing conservation of the remarkable landscape in which Shillim sits. Through workshops, we ask hard questions about what the place is, what conservation means, to whom does it “belong”; through residencies, we bring artists, scientists and others to work collaboratively on projects that express the nature of place.
Business & Sustainability
About Sustainability Workshop: Bringing business, research, academia and civil society together to exchange ideas on sustainability and to explore areas of joint action to create a positive impact on climate, biodiversity and other key dimensions under ESG.
The Shillim Collective
The key outcome of this program is to build a road map for pursuing conservation of the remarkable landscape in which Shillim sits. Through workshops, we ask hard questions about what the place is, what conservation means, to whom does it “belong”; through residencies, we bring artists, scientists and others to work collaboratively on projects that express the nature of place.
Business & Sustainability
About Sustainability Workshop: Bringing business, research, academia and civil society together to exchange ideas on sustainability and to explore areas of joint action to create a positive impact on climate, biodiversity and other key dimensions under ESG.
One Landscape - our global sister organisation
A not-for-profit organisation, its a collective of performance and studio artists, scientists, architects, landscape architects, policymakers, and entrepreneurs that promotes the conservation of wild places around the globe, forwarding a new understanding of conservation as a creative practice. It is the global sister organisation of the Shillim Institute, which is located at the heart of the Sahyadri Range.
Led by Margie Ruddick, landscape planner/designer, winner of the 2013 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award in landscape architecture; & Martin Brody, composer, Wellesley College Professor (Emeritus) & 2007-10 Arts Director, American Academy in Rome.
Mission
- To promote the conservation of wild landscapes by integrating science, art, policy, and community.
- To develop sustainable conservation road maps through collaborative, creative, local, and international partnerships.
- To shift the culture of conservation from one that objectifies nature to one that understands humans as integral to natural systems.
For me Shillim is also a concept, a practice, and a promise. It has been for me a place of restoration, renewal, as well as struggle and frustration. Often Shillim is a place that I can venture to physically, or simply in my mind, when I feel I am losing myself. - Margie Ruddick
Martin Brody
Martin Brody is Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music (Emeritus) at Wellesley College. He served as the Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome from 2007-10 and as Fromm Resident in Musical Composition at the Academy in 2001.
He has received numerous awards for his musical compositions, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Academy-Institute Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and commissions from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fromm Foundation, and numerous ensembles.
He has written extensively about post-war modernism in music and currently serves on the editorial board of Perspectives of New Music and as President of the Stefan Wolpe Society.
The Shillim Quartet by Erin Gee for Kronos Quartet, San Francisco
We all have our Shillims – those precious landscapes that have formed us, nurtured us and possibly saved us. We need to safeguard not only the landscapes, but the role all our Shillims play in the lives of the human species. We are increasingly distanced from wild places, where we connect with who we are as part of a larger natural system. Shillim as a concept is that place where we can reconnect. As a practice it is the ability to move beyond the chatter and exhaustion of our everyday lives, to tap into the deep sense of renewal that a place like Shillim provides and come back to ourselves. As a promise it is this: that for our children and our grandchildren landscapes like Shillim will still exist. – Margie Ruddick
