The Tribal Women Artists Cooperative (TWAC) was formed in l993 from a project for creating tribal art funded by the Australian High Commission, New Delhi. This cooperative was founded and is directed by Bulu Imam, the environmentalist, who also happens to be the Regional Convener of the Hazaribagh Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). About fifty tribal women currently benefit from this unique self-support project.

The raison d'etre for the founding of the cooperative was :

• To highlight planned opencast coal mining and destruction of forests vital to the tribals as well as tigers and elephants using them as corridors in an area of about two thousand square kilometres in the upper watershed of river Damodar in Jharkhand.

• For highlighting the prehistoric rockart of the region which is a continuing tradition in the art of the tribal people of the North Karanpura valley threatened since l987 by the opencast coal mining being implemented by the Central Coalfields Limited through the North Karanpura Coalfields Project which will destroy 2000 sq. kilometres of forest and very rich agricultural lands of indigenous tribal societies and displace 203 tribal villages, their peoples and their art.

• To establish the indigenous nature of the local peoples and their villages, which are being threatened in their totality, on the basis of the prehistoric rockart connected with the village art and in view of the earlier Iron, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, Megalithic, Mesolithic, and Palaeolithic habitation sites of the region connected with the evolution of the cultural heritage of the region.

• To document on handmade art paper the village wall painting done by tribal women on their mudden house walls which is evolved from the adjoining prehistoric rockart.. This art on paper becomes an economic resource to bring to the tribal women of the region a sense of strength in their identity and as a means of economic support in facing both official harassment in view of the mining project which is destabilizing their lives. All moneys received through sale of artworks are divided into three accounts, i.) The Sanskriti Tribal art project; ii.) The Artists Employment fund through which a third of all earnings goes directly to the artist; iii.) The Tribal Women Artists Welfare Fund