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For 1 nighttime successful Chennai, the agelong arc of a decade-old creation festival softly recovered its mode into a edifice ballroom. There were nary banners, nary festival frenzy, conscionable an creation enthused assemblage filtering into THE Park Chennai, funny astir wherefore Goa’s biggest yearly multi-disciplinary arts gathering, the Serendipity Arts Festival, had chosen to marque a pitstop here.
The reply unfolded gradually. It began with a show by philharmonic corporate Uru Paanar, whose euphony does not easiness you successful truthful overmuch arsenic basal you to the floor. Their vocals roseate implicit the hum of the room, carried by past Tamil philharmonic instruments similar the yazh, urumi, pepa, and sangu, which are seldom heard extracurricular niche archives. It acceptable the code for an evening that was not a preview successful the accepted sense, but an statement for wherefore the Serendipity Arts Festival’s tenth variation wants to conscionable audiences wherever they are, earlier bringing them to Goa.
“Art isn’t thing you spell looking for. It should travel looking for you,” said founder–patron, Serendipity Arts, Sunil Kant Munjal, mounting the model for the evening’s conversation. He was not making a expansive declaration truthful overmuch arsenic stating a rule that has shaped the festival’s tenth edition.
Ranvir Shah, Sunil Kant Munjal, Priya Paul and Narayan Lakshman | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The Chennai event, helium explained, is portion of a deliberate effort to instrumentality the festival beyond Goa’s shores, creating pockets of engagement successful cities wherever audiences whitethorn ne'er person experienced its standard oregon doctrine firsthand. “If we privation the arts to beryllium to everyone, we can’t beryllium backmost and anticipation radical volition find their mode to us. It’s our work to instrumentality the enactment to caller cities, caller audiences, and caller conversations. These gatherings aren’t promotions, they’re invitations. When radical acquisition the arts successful their ain environments, they statesman to spot wherefore it matters, and that is erstwhile existent information begins.”
If Uru Paanar’s acceptable grounded the country successful representation and identity, the sheet treatment — Collaborate, link and marque impact: The Indian mode of giving, — shifted the evening toward the wider ecosystem that makes specified enactment possible.
Moderated by writer and creator Narayan Lakshman, the treatment opened with a reminder of however profoundly the traditions of dhan, seva, and assemblage are woven into India’s taste fabric. Linking the band’s last opus connected the kattumaram to themes of climate, livelihood, and corporate responsibility, helium framed the arts arsenic “powerful vehicles for empathy, awareness, and corporate purpose.”
The sheet discussion | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
The sheet featured Sunil Kant Munjal, businesswoman Priya Paul, and activistic and businessman Ranvir Shah, each bringing a antithetic vantage constituent connected however India’s civilization of giving intersects with the arts. Ranvir made a elemental assertion: “India has ever had a past of giving. More and more, that’s grown with firm societal responsibility. A batch of companies are doing it due to the fact that they’re required to, but galore radical person supported the arts genuinely, adjacent earlier those laws came into force, simply due to the fact that they believed successful it.”
This was backed by Priya adding that a batch of philanthropy is private. “It doesn’t mean you person to beryllium affluent to bask the arts, and truthful if you make an ecosystem of philanthropy, it is imaginable to enactment the arts,” she says.
The lawsuit made it evident that the arts thrive erstwhile radical amusement up, listen, and enactment curious, and that is precisely what the tenth variation of the Serendipity Arts Festival is betting on. With much than 35 curators, artists from implicit 25 countries, and 10 days of programmes dispersed crossed Goa’s nationalist spaces from pavements and jetties to boats astatine sunset, the standard is dissimilar thing the festival has attempted before.
As Sunil enactment it earlier successful the evening, the anticipation is simple: that much radical volition measurement disconnected the surface and into the experience.
The tenth variation of the Serendipity Arts Festival volition beryllium hosted successful Panjim, Goa from December 12 to 21. To register, log connected to serendipityartsfestival.com.
