The Odisha Craft Odyssey (OCO) Residency Programme is an immersive field-based experience designed for researchers, artists, designers, writers, photographers, filmmakers, curators, and cultural practitioners seeking a deeper understanding of Odisha's living craft traditions.
 

Each residency brings together a multidisciplinary cohort for an intensive period of travel, research, documentation, and engagement across craft clusters, workshops, homes, temples, markets, and community spaces. Participants move beyond observation to experience the realities of craft practice firsthand — learning from artisans, understanding material processes, documenting oral histories, and engaging with the social and cultural systems that sustain these traditions.
 

The residency is grounded in the belief that craft knowledge cannot be fully understood from a distance. It must be encountered through conversations, shared experiences, field observations, and direct engagement with the communities that continue to practice and preserve it.
 

Participants travel extensively across Odisha, navigating diverse geographies and working conditions while developing their own research, documentation, artistic, or curatorial responses. The programme encourages interdisciplinary dialogue and creates opportunities for meaningful exchange between practitioners from different backgrounds.
 

At the conclusion of the residency, participants contribute to OCO's growing archive of knowledge through research materials, visual documentation, essays, creative works, exhibitions, publications, or other forms of public engagement.