Serendipity Art Festival's founder Sunil Kant Munjal on sustaining art in India's next decade
Sunil Kant Munjal, Chairman of Hero Enterprise, is recognised as a leader whose influence extends across major sectors, from industry to policy. Alongside his business acumen, he is the visionary Founder and Patron of the Serendipity Arts Foundation (SAF).
With the Serendipity Arts Festival returning to Panaji, Goa, for its landmark tenth edition this December, we explore his commitment to the arts. We discuss his vision for fostering creativity and collaboration, and his belief that when the arts thrive, society moves forward.
The 10th edition marks a significant milestone. Looking back, how has the festival’s vision evolved over the years?
When we began, the vision was simply to create a democratic space where art could become a part of everyday life. Over the years, that vision has expanded into a much larger ecosystem. We now think not only about the ten days in Goa, but about how we support artists, build knowledge, and engage communities throughout the year. The festival has evolved from an event into a cultural platform - one that nurtures practice, fosters collaboration, and strengthens South Asia’s creative future.
Given your involvement with academic institutions and SAF’s emphasis on arts education, what policy changes are essential for integrating arts, crafts, and liberal studies into India’s mainstream curriculum?
We need a shift from treating the arts as supplementary to recognising them as essential to holistic learning. This requires policy frameworks that support long-term arts education in schools, integrate craft and material culture into curricula, and build partnerships between educational institutions and cultural organisations. Equally important is investing in teacher training and creating viable career pathways for students in the creative sectors. Only then can the arts become a meaningful part of India’s educational landscape.
SAF champions inclusion through programmes for differently abled and marginalised communities. What are the philosophical and logistical challenges of "Art for All," and how do you measure impact?
“Art for All” is both an aspiration and an ongoing responsibility. The philosophical challenge is to ensure that inclusion is not an afterthought but a structural principle. Logistically, it means investing in trained facilitators, accessible spaces, and long-term community partnerships. We measure impact not only through numbers, but through the depth of engagement when participants return year after year, when communities begin to see art as part of their daily lives, and when new voices enter the cultural conversation. That, to me, is the most meaningful metric.
With satellite events across cities like Paris and Dubai, how will the Foundation ensure that the ethos of accessibility, interdisciplinary, and Goan community engagement remains intact?
Our expansion is not about replication; it is about deepening relationships. Wherever we travel, whether Paris, Dubai, or cities across India, we carry forward the core principles that shaped us in Goa: access, interdisciplinary, and a commitment to context. These values inform the way we design programmes, choose partners, and engage audiences. And importantly, our work in Goa does not diminish; it remains the heart of the Foundation. The satellite events simply allow the conversations that begin in Goa to circulate more widely.
With emerging technologies like AI-driven art, how does SAF balance digital innovation with the preservation of India’s heritage and craft traditions?
For us, innovation and tradition are not opposing forces. South Asia has always been a place where multiple knowledge systems coexist. At SAF, we approach technology as another language artists can use - one that can sit alongside, and even illuminate, traditional craft forms. Our programming tries to create dialogues between the digital and the handmade, showing how heritage can inform contemporary practice and how new tools can expand the possibilities of expression. The balance comes from allowing these worlds to interact rather than choosing one over the other.
What’s next for Serendipity Arts Festival?
The next phase is about strengthening Serendipity as a year-round cultural ecosystem. We will continue to deepen our residencies, fellowships, educational programmes, and collaborations that support artists across South Asia. Our multi-city engagements this year from Birmingham to Ahmedabad, Varanasi, Delhi, Chennai, Gurugram, Dubai and Paris, have shown us how powerful it is to carry Serendipity’s ethos into different contexts, and this is a direction we will build on thoughtfully. At the same time, Goa will remain our anchor. As we enter our second decade, our focus is on creating sustainable cultural structures that nurture practice, engage communities, and help shape the future of the arts in the region.