Panchayat was founded in London in 1988 by Shaheen Merali and Allan de Souza, in consultation with Bhajan Hunjan, Symrath Patti and Shanti Thomas, as a response to the need for the representation of Southern world and first nation artists. Panchayat was first imagined by the group as an arts organisation whose focus was to create an archive of work by contemporary artists who would produce issue-based work, with a particular focus on cultural identity and the intersection between race, class, gender, policed sexualities, and (dis)ability. As the organisation developed it was involved in publishing, conferences, exhibitions and workshops.
The Panchayat Collection, formerly Panchayat Arts Education Resource Unit (PAERU), consists of ephemera, information files, exhibition catalogues, books, journals, slides and videos relating to cultural activities and activism in Britain, mainland Europe, North America and South Asia between the 1980s and 2003. The Panchayat Collection is of central importance to the practice and exhibition histories of artists with South Asian, Caribbean and African heritage, living and working in Britain during this period.
Between 1997 and 2015 the collection was housed at the University of Westminster. In 2015, Shaheen Merali and Dr. Janice Cheddie, custodians of the Panchayat Collection, agreed to the transfer of the material to Tate Library as a Special Collection. Since then, it has attracted newer audiences and a wide range of researchers exploring topics including diasporic connections and the role of women of colour in the visual arts. The Panchayat Collection was the focus of a case study for the Provisional Semantics research project in 2020-2022.
