150 musicians jamming to Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. The base, acoustic and electric guitars blending in seamlessly with the drums and the vocalists singing those famous opening lines: We don't need no education. This is what People's Collective is really about. It's not just a three-minute video where artists jam to the iconic song that's a protest against rigid education, it's the collective voice of the artists that matters and one must pay attention to it, says Supreeta Amancherla. This video, which will release soon, is not only a celebration of the artists but also marked the five year anniversary of the Tree Huggers Club, an organisation that Amancherla started to help artists and creative entrepreneurs who make art and aspire to make a mark for themselves as well. And when we say 'help', we mean everything from helping them take off, conceptualising, business consultation, teaching them about digital marketing, social media, public relations and beyond. Basically, mentoring and guiding artists through the whole process of 'making it big'.
Coming back to the video, 30-year-old Amancherla says, "Tree Huggers Club is well known in the art community, but we wanted all of Hyderabad to know who we are. We wanted the government to recognise what we are doing. We wanted even other cities to know that having a sustainable career in art is possible in this city." The video is clearly making the right noise already because she also informs us that, React, a federation linked to the United Nation, is collaborating with them for the 100 Days of Peace programme.
Amancherla's intention behind starting this club was to help artists in Hyderabad. She was frustrated with the fact that people assumed that one has to step out of the city and travel to Bengaluru or Pune to be an artist. "We have our own rich culture and heritage right here. After all, even big artists like Bryan Adams are coming to our city to perform! All I'm trying to say is that there is scope for budding artists — musicians, painters and everyone else — here as well," she explains. But putting together the video was no smooth sailing. After four to five sessions spaced out in a month, on the final day of the shoot, it was raining cats and dogs. But that did not affect the artists who had gathered at Beats Per Minute, Gachibowli on August 19 to shoot the video.
Amancherla says that we can expect a lot more gigs, which they call Tree Huggers Cassette, in the coming months and more of their famous flea markets, Flea Affair. And what started with 15 artists, which has now grown to include 1,000 artists, will continue to grow, informs a happy Amancherla.
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