A Festival Connections event
4 Dec, 2019
4:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m Kolkata Centre for Creativity
British Council India presents
THE REVOLVING DOOR: DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN INDIAN ART FESTIVALS
Cultural festivals are created to showcase, celebrate and represent the diversity of our art, culture, values, and people. So the question is… how diverse and inclusive are we being while planning and executing these festivals? Is diversity and inclusion just a checkbox for India’s culture sector?
To explore these critical aspects of cultural representation we conducted a series of sessions in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata.
In Kolkata, our panelists included Sumona Chakravarty (Founder, Hamdasti and Chitpur Local), Anjum Katyal (Director, Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival) and Siddhant Shah (Founder, Access for ALL). The session was moderated by Dipti Rao (Head - Research, The Art X Company).
The speakers discussed the various aspects of diversity and inclusivity, be it programming of the festival content, the audience the festivals reach out to, even the internal teams that the festival hire. The panelists enumerated some approaches that they try to remain as diverse and inclusive through the various ways in which the festivals function. Please click here to access the video recording of the session.