Curtains go up on 4th edition of Serendipity Arts Festival

The curtains on the fourth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival went up on Thursday evening with 'dhamaal' as an ensemble of musicians from across the country came together to create what was nothing less than a spectacle at the Central Park in Connaught Place here.

The week-long arts festival will be held in Panaji this year from December 15 to 22.

"Ever since the festival began in 2016, we have been trying to build an ecosystem that supports various art practices from across the country and South Asia. The fact that we are now in our fourth year shows not just our commitment, but also the progress we have made, and the impact we have created.

"We are happy to share a part of the Serendipity experience through this performance in the heart of Delhi," Sunil Kant Munjal, founder patron of Serendipity Arts Foundation, said.

"Dhamaal", a music project curated by Aneesh Pradhan, opened the festival here with an amalgamation of folk and devotional songs from different regions of the country -- Rajasthan, Manipur, Maharashtra -- brought to life with the use of traditional percussion instruments like dhol, tabla, tasha, chonka, dholki and more.

Like the previous editions, this year too, the festival will attempt to unite seven creative disciplines, showcasing performative, visual, and culinary practices.

The festival will be spearheaded by 14 curators -- Pramod KG and Kristine Michael for craft, Aneesh Pradhan and Sneha Khanwalkar for music, Atul Kumar and Arundhati Nag for theatre, Leela Samson and Mayuri Upadhya for Dance, Rahul Akerkar and Prahlad Sukhtankar for culinary arts, Jyotindra Jain and Sudarshan Shetty for visual arts, and Rahaab Allana and Ravi Agarwal for photography.

The fourth edition will feature over 90 projects that will continue the festival's primary objective of fostering the development of thriving artistic communities across India.

Panel discussions, children's programmes, and workshops for the differently-abled will also be organised to make the arts inclusive, educational and accessible whilst maintaining rigour and depth.

Alongside the core discipline events, the festival this year will present a series of special projects across disciplines curated by St+art India Foundation, Vidya Shivadas (FICA), Anurupa Roy and Nancy Adajania, among others.