A Festival Connections event
Friday, 20 March, 2020
4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
FESTIVAL CONNECTIONS
An Annual Programme of Expertise, Knowledge, and Networking between India and the UK.
presented by British Council India
LEAD, GOVERN, SCALE, REPEAT - Festival building and management in India | Webinar 1
As the coronavirus situation evolved across multiple cities in India, the Art X Company and British Council chose an alternate way and took the opportunity to go digital. The third edition of Festival Connections: Lead, Govern, Scale, Repeat – a series of presentation + panel discussion events in four cities was reformatted to two webinars.
The first session was held on 20 March from 4:00 to 6:00 PM where we had a brilliant panel talk of leadership and governance in the contemporary festivals sector. The panelists included Harsha Tapke - Co-Founder, Koli Seafood Festival, Smriti Rajgarhia - Director, Serendipity Arts Festival, Sarah Elizabeth Chawla
- Co-Founder and Director, Magnetic Fields Festival, Tarini Sethi - Founder and Curator, The Irregulars Art Fair and Warren de Sylva - Chief Creative Officer, Believe entertainment. Kate Ward from UK gave a theoretical perspective on Leadership & Governance at the session moderated by Rashmi Dhanwani - Director, The Art X Company.
The leadership models which ranged from corporate structure of an IP led festival like Ranthambore organised by Believe entertainment to the Community led festival like the Koli Seafood festival were analysed.
Governance structures of Serendipity Arts Festival, a large scale multidisciplinary arts festival were examined along with the Irregular Art Fair, which is small-scale and alternative in nature.
Sarah Elizabeth Chawla from the Magnetic fields also touched upon the various challenges they face while running festivals year after year including the necessary funding that they need to generate.
The webinar was attended by 131 unique viewers from all around the world. The session saw audiences from Nepal, Indonesia, Sweden, Germany, UK and USA apart from India engage with the panelists through a very interactive Q&A system that saw the speakers answers the queries throughout the run-time.
To check out the recording of the webinar, please click here.