ICAC / About
About the councilA permanent home for Indian arts in Canada.
Indo‑Canada Arts Council is a not‑for‑profit institution founded in 2014 and based in Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario.
Purpose
Culture needs institutions, not just occasions.
A festival can be brilliant once and vanish. What survives is the organisation behind it: the relationships with venues and funders, the standards of programming, the people who know how it is done. ICAC was founded to be that organisation for Indian and South Asian arts in Canada.
We began in 2014 with a single Diwali celebration in Mississauga. That festival now draws a quarter of a million people. Around it we have built a literature festival, a film festival, a food festival and an international touring programme, each with its own audience and its own reason to exist.
The council does not compete with the communities it serves. It builds the stage and then hands over the microphone.
Four things we are here to do.
Present
Bring the finest artists, writers and film‑makers from India to Canadian audiences, and give Canadian artists a route into India.
Preserve
Keep living cultural traditions in active practice rather than in archives, by staging them for new audiences every year.
Engage
Give the South Asian diaspora in Canada a cultural home, and give every other Canadian an open door into it.
Build
Create durable institutions rather than one‑off events, so this work has somewhere to live after any single festival ends.
What the council reaches in a year.
250,000+
Festival attendees
10M+
Digital reach
1,500+
Artists and performers
2,500+
Livelihoods supported
1.8M+
People of Indian origin in the GTA
Figures are aggregated across all ICAC initiatives and are indicative. Confirm final metrics before external circulation.
Led by a volunteer council.
ICAC is governed by a volunteer board of directors who set its cultural direction, choose its initiatives and hold its partnerships across Canada and India.
Ajaay Modi
Founder and Director
Toronto, Canada
Ajaay Modi is the founder and director of Indo‑Canada Arts Council. For more than three decades he has built cultural bridges between Canada and India through cinema, television and the performing arts. As founder of AME Telefilms Ltd he has brought over 150 films to Canada and produced or directed more than twenty‑five of his own. He founded ICAC in 2014 and leads its portfolio of festivals and cultural missions.
Further council members to be announced.