A Festival Connections event
Friday, 27 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.
British Council India presents
LEAD, GOVERN, SCALE, REPEAT - Festival building and management in India |
Webinar 2
As the coronavirus situation evolved across multiple cities in India, the Art X Company and British Council choose an alternate way by taking the opportunity to go digital. Festival Connections were reformatted into webinars and the second session of the series was held on 27 March.
Speakers from Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and the UK joined us on the Zoom platform to discuss some of the key aspects of Leadership and Governance in the Festival Sector.
The session was inaugurated by Barbara Wickham (Director, British Council - India) following which the moderator of the session Rashmi Dhanwani took on the lead. The session saw a bunch of festivals across India being studied for its leadership and governance structures.
The session started with Tom Wilcox (Senior Partner - Counterculture) from the UK sharing a detailed study of the Covid -19 situation and how it has affected the Arts and Culture sector, which further emphasised the need of Leadership and Governance structures in Festivals.
Rashmi introduced the festivals being represented on the session one by one, starting with Vikram Iyengar, Founder and Director, Pickle Factory Dance Foundation, Srikrishna Ramamoorthy, Co-Founder, Bangalore Literature Festival, Harishankar Krishnaswami - Secretary, Narada Gana Sabha Chennai, Varun Gupta - Co-founder and Director - Chennai Photo Biennale, Sanjoy Ganguly - Artistic Director, Jana Sanskriti Centre for Theatre of the Oppressed and Lubna Shaheen - Programme Director, Ziro Festival of Music.
An interesting mix of festival models were presented by the panelist which ranged from artist led, community led, collective led and corporate backed festivals.
The session attended by 285 unique viewers from 15 countries was highly engaging with a record 96 questions being answered during the session.
The participants got to learn about the different models of leadership and governance in these varied festivals and expressed their interest to explore more aspects of festival management through such sessions.