FLO Lucknow, in collaboration with BMW, hosted an interactive session, Shades of a Woman- Pop Art Workshop, for its members. Sapphire Banquets on 20th May 2026 looked different from the inside than it usually does. Tables set not with crockery but with canvas, brushes, and paint. 65 women who had walked in as entrepreneurs, professionals, and committee members — and were about to spend an afternoon being none of those things. Just makers.
Shades of a Woman took its name seriously. Pop Art, as a form, has always been interested in the overlooked — the everyday image elevated, the ordinary subject rendered extraordinary through colour and intention. Applied to a room full of women, that premise becomes something personal. Each canvas became, in some way, a self-portrait — not literally, but in the choices made. The colours reached for.
The shapes are committed to. The moments of hesitation, and then the brush stroke that went ahead anyway. What was visible across the afternoon was the particular loosening that happens when capable, high-functioning people are given permission to not be experts at something. Early in the session, several members held their brushes with the extreme caution of people who had not done this in decades and were not sure they remembered how. An hour in, that caution had largely disappeared. Colour was being mixed. Choices were being made quickly, confidently, sometimes loudly — with opinions and laughter and the occasional
genuinely surprised response to what had appeared on the canvas. Event chair Nidhi Sethia moved through the room with the ease of someone who had thought carefully about the kind of afternoon she wanted to create — and had created it. The atmosphere was joyful in a way that did not feel manufactured. It was the natural result of a group of women making things together, without agenda, without outcome pressure, without anyone keeping score.
Key Takeaways
- 65+ members immersed themselves in Pop Art — a bold, accessible medium that requires no prior training and rewards instinct, colour, and creative confidence
- Shades of a Woman established Visual Art as a meaningful and purposeful dimension of FLO Lucknow’s empowerment programming — not an extra, but an essential
- Creative expression, like professional development, is a form of growth — and a woman who makes things thinks differently about everything she does
- Pop Art’s accessibility made the workshop genuinely inclusive — members at every level of artistic experience engaged fully and produced work they were proud of
- The afternoon demonstrated that high-performing women often have creative reserves they have simply not had permission or space to access
- FLO Lucknow’s programming philosophy — that building a woman fully means building her creatively, not just professionally — found one of its clearest expressions in this workshop
- Nidhi Sethia’s curatorial leadership shaped an event that balanced structure with freedom — the precise combination that makes creative workshops actually work
- Art as community — making things alongside peers builds a quality of connection that conversations and panels rarely reach
- A woman who has spent an afternoon creating something with her hands returns to her professional life with a different kind of energy — more expansive, more confident, more her
- Shades of a Woman is not just a workshop title — it is a statement of what FLO Lucknow believes about its members: that they are complex, layered, and deserve programming that honours all of it
Impact
Sixty-five members left with a canvas each — and something harder to carry but just as real. The reminder that they are not only the sum of their professional roles. That there are shades to them that deserve expression. And that sometimes, all it takes to access those shades is a brush, some paint, and an afternoon that belongs entirely to them