Dreams do come true! All you need is right motive, right people, meticulous planning and sheer hard work. You also need a right team for execution of plans, who believe in the very idea as you have believed in. And if this is about an academic conference, You also need some well-wishers and a good number of participants to organize it successfully. When all of these falls at place then something like CREATIVE (Contemporary Representations of Art, Theatre, Image and Visual Expressions) takes place. Not exactly the way you have planned it, as it could go beyond the level of your imagination and planning. The same happened with CREATIVE, when the very idea of having a one-day conference, as announced, exploded and we have been forced to extend it for two days and even then, we were not able to accommodate all who wanted to participate in the conference.   

            Though, CREATIVE-2024 was our first edition, our dreams had no bound. We had planned an Interdisciplinary International Conference of Art & Culture focused on SAARC Nations and for that we needed a good number for Indian and International participations. We were afraid of many things initially, whether people will respond to our call for papers, whether we will get enough international participants, whether we will be able to manage the resources and the whole affair, as we were organizing a conference for the first time. We were not sure of anything and many a times clueless too. We started with a lot of hesitations and nervousness but we had great hopes and a great team, who can handle the challenges as & when appear. And that hope and the teamwork itself brought magical results. In our very first conference, we got total 110 abstracts against our call for papers. Out of these 110 abstracts over 90 were selected and called for paper presentations. Nearly, 80 people joined our conference in hybrid mode, almost 60 percent in offline mode while rest 40 percent joined in online mode. We got almost a dozen abstracts from the international participants out of which, nearly 9-10 have joined the conference, most of them were of the SAARC countries which were the focused countries of the conference. This was an achievement we didn’t even expected at the first place. I am not saying this was beyond our imagination but surely beyond our expectation in the very first conference.    

            CREATIVE was an idea, first imagined and developed in 2017-18. A proper proposal has been made and submitted to the department but the time was not conducive. There were no takers of the idea to whom it has been propagated. The very first proposal of CREATIVE was of a three day International Conference of Art & Culture, to celebrate the contemporary Art & Cultural practices of India and the World with focus on SAARC countries. The very idea of conference focus on SAARC countries had come due to the similar social, cultural and ethical values and artistic practices we share apart from boundaries with some of the South Asian Nations. The conference was supposed to cater all the artistic & cultural practices, involving the theoreticians, academicians, researchers and practitioners as well. We wanted it to be not only just an Interdisciplinary but also a multilingual conference. That’s why we were open to accept papers in three languages i.e. Bengali, English & Hindi. Thus, the actual idea was always of having a Multilingual Interdisciplinary International Conference of Art & Culture, which we exercised in CREATIVE-2024.      

            In 2023, at the Department level proposals have been sought for organizing a conference. The CREATIVE proposal was reworked and submitted for having a three-day Interdisciplinary International Conference of Art & Culture as planned earlier. But due to budget and other constraints it was first narrowed down to a two-day conference and later before the call for papers being given it was narrowed down to just one day due to the same constraints. But, the overwhelming response of the participants against call for papers of CREATIVE-2024, forced us to organize a two days conference. The very idea conceived in 2017, explored first in 2024 with support of many people from inside and outside the Department of RSDD, Sangit Bhavana, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. To accommodate maximum numbers of participants we had to collaborate with various other departments and centers of Visva-Bharati i.e. CIAS-Kala Bhavana, Dept. of Hindi-Bhasha Bhavana, CCL-Bhasha Bhavana and CJMC-Vidya Bhavana. Without their whole hearted support it couldn’t have been possible to organize such a conference at such a short notice.

            Organizing a conference was a big task and it took a lot of effort from the side of us organizers. We had faced many troubles and challenges but together with the support of the colleagues, volunteers, staffs and the students we could manage it really well. But this was not an end. We had promised to publish the quality papers as conference proceeding. This was a challenge or task more lethal than organizing the conference. If organizing the conference took our sweat, publishing the papers as conference proceeding literally took our blood. The challenges were multifaceted and we were a handful of people. Out of 80 paper presentations in the conference almost 60 participants had submitted their full paper. We had huge task of selecting quality papers for publication. The first review had been done at the department level and out of these 60 papers 21-22 papers were selected for the publication. After that we approached various experts (subject wise) for the second reviews. In the process many papers were shelved because of plagiarism issue and AI use in writing the papers (In certain papers it was found more than 60%). It was a big blow for all of us, who have worked tirelessly for the conference and publication of the conference proceedings. This is something beyond our imagination that academicians and researchers could do this and use immoral way in producing research papers. We have to shelve few of the papers we have chosen for publication too. A lot of hard work of ours and experts gone in vain in the process. 

            After a lot of checking, rechecking, alteration and changes with support of the experts and writers, finally these papers are getting published as paper proceeding of the conference CREATIVE-2024. We might publish some other papers in future, which are not part of this issue. So, even this is not the end of the tunnel. We can still expect some light at the end of it in future, when we will come up with new publications. We have focused mainly on English papers for publication in this journal. There are paper submissions in Bengali & Hindi languages too, which needs to be taken care of for publication. Hopefully, their turn will come after this.    

            We would like to thank all those who were part of this difficult yet satisfying journey. The reviewers and experts (both inside and outside the department) who helped in the whole process of publication. People and well-wishers, who supported us wholeheartedly in the whole journey, from organizing the conference to the stage of publication. Our dearest colleagues, staffs and dear students who have worked tirelessly. We would particularly like to thank our PhD scholars Ms. Sejuti Bagchi, Ms. Goge Bam & Mr. Punesh Parth, who have played crucial role not only during the conference but also during the publication process.

            We are thankful to the Head of Department of Dept. of Hindi and In Charge of Centers like CIAS-Kala Bhavana, CCL-Bhasha Bhavana & CJMC-Vidya Bhavana, who collaborated with us for organizing a successful conference. We are thankful to the participants of the conference CREATIVE-2024 for believing in our dream. We are also thankful to all the contributors who have taken enough pain to revise, rewrite and rearrange their papers according to the need of the journal. Last but not the least, we are greatly indebted to Mr. Bivash Bishnu Chowdhury, the managing editor of the journal, whose hard work is shaping in the form of this particular issue. While working with him on this issue, we could understand that how hard it is to publish an academic journal. No word can suffice to his labor and pain invested in the very process.

            Hopefully, we will be coming up with more conference proceedings very soon!

            Thank you all once again for believing in us and waiting patiently for this long!

            Better Late than Never!