Goa, December 16: The Serendipity Arts Foundation launched the fourth edition of their flagship arts initiative, Serendipity Arts Festival 2019, in Goa at an inaugural event held at the Old Goa Institute of Management.
Co-Presented by Havell’s and Powered by HDFC ERGO & GMR, the Festival is set to take place in Panaji, Goa from 15 - 22 December and will include over 100 projects showcasing visual, performing and culinary arts projects.
Hosted by Sunil Kant Munjal, Founder Patron, Serendipity Arts Foundation, the evening was inaugurated by Guest of Honour, Shri Pramod Pandurang Sawant, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Goa who was joined on stage by other dignitaries and Govt officials.
The event was attended by several distinguished individuals from Goa and luminaries from the art industry along with this year’s festival curators, representing the fields of Visual Arts, Photography, Culinary Arts, Craft, Music, Dance, and Theatre.
Addressing the evening, Smriti Rajgarhia, Director, Serendipity Arts Foundation & Festival introduced this year’s Festival to the guests emphasizing the importance of arts and culture in today’s society, and the Festival’s commitment to accessibility and arts education, as well as the diversity and artistic integrity of this year’s projects.
The event also included an evening of music by Peter Cat Recording Co, a band based in New Delhi, who create and record a variety of different music ranging from Gypsy Jazz to Ballroom Waltz to Midnight Moonlight car chase music.
During the event, Sunil Kant Munjal also unveiled the cover of his upcoming book, The Making of Hero: Four Brothers, Two Wheels and a Revolution that Shaped India. The book, published by HarperCollins India, chronicles the journey of the Munjal family and how they built the Hero Group.
It tells the story of an enterprise built on honesty, integrity and respect for the individual & fair play.
The book offers an inside look at how four brothers with no formal education or access to resources created a world-class enterprise in an era when building a business from the ground up was simply unimaginable.
The Serendipity Arts Festival is an initiative of the Serendipity Arts Foundation, which was founded in 2016 by Sunil Kant Munjal and his family. The Festival’s fourth edition is focused on fostering cultural development and supporting emerging artists across South Asia. It is unique as the only arts event in the country that unites the creative disciplines.
Speaking about the event Munjal said, “We are delighted to be back in Goa and launch the Fourth Edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival. We are happy to create an ecosystem where we are able to support the diverse art practices from the South Asian region. We have constantly worked over the past few years to energize the art practices and production from the region and present its unique cultural mosaic to the world. We have broadened the creative horizons of the Festival by making it more interactive, immersive, accessible and innovative, this year.”
Present at the occasion the Chief Minister of Goa, Shri Pramod Pandurang Sawant said, Goa is known for the sun, sand and the sea along with food, football and festivals but in the coming time Goa will be known for the Serendipity Arts Festival. We are very proud to be the venue partner of the Festival which is bigger and better in this edition. It is a great opportunity for people to witness the work of talented artists in the field of visual, performing and culinary arts. We will continue to support the Festival and welcome people from all over the world to experience that beauty, culture and hospitality of the city.
Present at the event Amit Tiwari - VP Marketing and Communications, Havells India Ltd, said, “Art is an essential element of life. We seek art in everything we see and experience around us. At Havells we believe in making a difference in our consumers’ life by adding art to the technology and making products which are aesthetically designed to look at and are logically advanced too.”
Serendipity Arts Festival is India’s first multi-disciplinary arts event committed to creating tangible change across the country’s cultural spectrum by engaging the public and increasing awareness of how art can impact society, whilst generating interest in public art projects across India. The Festival also aims to foster the development of thriving artistic communities across India, making the arts inclusive, educational and accessible whilst maintaining rigour and depth.
The first three editions of the event transformed Goa and received an extremely positive reception from both the public and arts fraternity, redefining perceptions of the arts whilst also fostering arts production, awareness and practice across the country.
In the previous editions, the festival attracted more than 4,50,000 visitors and activated 1500 artists creating significant impact and contributing to the cultural regeneration of Panaji, Goa, with dynamic projects that have included national and internationally acclaimed performances highlighting India’s rich traditions of music, dance and theatre, alongside culinary arts, craft, and visual arts exhibitions.
The line-up of curators for 2019 includes Craft: Pramod KG, Kristine Michael | Music: Aneesh Pradhan and Sneha Khanwalkar | Theatre: Atul Kumar and Arundhati Nag | Dance: Leela Samson and Mayuri Upadhya | Culinary Arts: Rahul Akerkar and Prahlad Sukhtankar | Visual Arts: Dr. Jyotindra Jain and Sudarshan Shetty | Photography: Rahaab Allana and Ravi Agarwal.
Projects will be further activated by diverse collateral programming including panel discussions, children’s programmes, and workshops for the differently-abled. These initiatives are an integral part of the Foundation’s key mission of making the arts accessible and developing arts audiences both in numbers and in diversity.
Unique activations in the core disciplines of Craft, Culinary Arts, Music, Photography, Visual Arts, Dance and Theatre, intend to invigorate dissipating and marginalised traditional art forms, whilst the more contemporary projects will address significant social issues. The festival, known for exhibiting art from the South Asian region, will see larger participation of artists across South Asian countries and performers from around the world.
The Festival this year also has special projects to promote Goan cultural heritage. Vivek Menezes, special projects curator, will curate Mundo Goa, a project that explores and celebrates the coming together of international artists from the Goan diaspora.
The project will pay tribute, and highlight the infinitely varied ways of being and belonging, that artists, writers and intellectuals derive from this unique cultural scenario. Participating artists include Amruta Patil, Antonio E Costa, Aruna D'Souza, Anjali Arondekar, Brendan Fernandes, Solomon Souza and Sergio Santimano.
Additionally, Lina Vincent and Akshay Mahajan in association with Rahaab Allana will be curating a large scale project called Goa Familia, which sets out with the objective to chronicle the socio-cultural footprint of Goa and Goans through family archives.
Culinary Arts curator Prahlad Sukhtankar is curating the Farmer's Market, an initiative to showcase agricultural produce intrinsic to the sustainability of the Goan region. There is also a community project titled Nhoi, meaning river in Konkani, curated by Rhea D'Souza & Elizabeth Kemp.
Along with the creative aspects, the festival also aims to have a broader spectrum of engagement, offering complete accessibility to the arts and greater creative inclusion through a number of workshops and Special Projects like Senses 4.0 by Siddhant Shah. These workshops will be a combination of tactile art, workshops, curated walks and activities aiming to make the festival more accessible to differently-abled visitors and school children from the locality.
The 100 projects this year will be accompanied by a series of Special Projects curated by Nancy Adajania, Anurupa Roy, HH Art Spaces, Harkat Studios, St+art India Foundation, Aradhana Seth and Vidya Shivadas, among several others.
Apart from basic amenities during the festival, there will be free shuttle services from all the venues, with 300+ volunteers and art guides designated to help visitors with queries regarding the festival and registration requirements. There will also be special accessibility volunteers for the differently-abled, emergency medical services available on site, free water stations at all venues, and free Pee Buddy kits for all women attendees and special needs children.
For additional information on the festival and programme schedule visit the official Serendipity Arts Festival website.
'Aware of blatant absurdity': Buyers of $120k banana titled 'Comedian' say it will be iconic
Ahead of 500th anniversary, Raphael exhibition with Madonna paintings opens in Berlin
Design talk: Akhilesh Gupta melds traditions and tech for his award-winning piece, The Blomar
A play of light and colour: Sharad and Rathika Haksar stage the perfect moment
55 artists showcase myriad shades of the season with Winter Art Exhibition at ICCR, Kolkata