Goa Open Arts Festival – New event for Goa’s cultural calendar

New Delhi, November 14, 2019: Goa Open Arts Festival is a new artist-driven program to galvanise the creative community of Goa. The festival will be an addition to Goa’s cultural calendar and will contribute towards establishing it as an artistic hub of India. Goa has a large pool of resident creative talent - artists, musicians, photographers, designers, writers, chefs, etc. This includes people who are native to Goa, as well as those from other parts of India and around the world who have chosen to make Goa their home. The vision of this new initiative is to invigorate and connect this Goa-based created community, with the belief that cross-pollination of ideas will catalyse new creativity, and that a creatively engaged population benefits society at large. The Goa Open Arts festival seeks to be an all-inclusive platform and welcomes participation from first-time artists and makers from across the creative arts. The festival will provide a platform for artistic expression and experimentation to established as well as upcoming arts practitioners. With a focus on community building, local impact and bringing awareness to social issues, the inaugural Goa Open Arts festival will host a parallel program of activities which highlight issues of sustainability and environmental impact. This subjects will be addressed through specially commissioned artworks, programs with children from the local community, and public talks and panel discussions. From our Open Call, we have received over 150 applications. Artists selected for the program include eminent Goan artist Walter D'Souza and Goan printmakers, visual artist Nandita Kumar, photographer Bharat Sikka, chef Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar (Edible Archives), the Travelling Library Project, Alakananda Nag, Orijit Sen, Nikhil Chopra, Sonia Shirsat, Adrien Roche, Ayesha Seth, Bharath Ramamrutham, and many emerging talents from Goa including Shilpa Mayenkar, Rujuta Rao, Mustafa Khanbhai, Dheer Kaku, Bhisaji Gadekar, Rajendra Mardolkar, Okedo & King Prawns, Nishant Saldanha and others. The format of the Goa Open Arts festival is a multi-arts programme, with something for everyone to enjoy. Alongside the Visual Arts exhibition, the festival will feature performing arts events including dance, spoken word and poetry; a music stage with a range of acts from Jazz, Fado to Rock and Electronic; a series of panel discussions featuring prominent Goan voices; and a selection of artisanal Goan eateries at the Food Waddo. The organising committee of the Goa Open Arts festival includes Prashant Panjiar (former curator of photography programs at Sunaparanta and Serendipity); Gurpreet Sidhu (Co-Founder of People Tree Collective); Gopika Chowfla (Graphic Designer and visual artist previously exhibited at Serendipity Art Festival); Diptej Vernekar (Artist and founding member of the Goa Artist Collective); and Sitara Chowfla (Curator and former programme manager at India Art Fair). The festival is planned to be an annually recurring event with an aim to increase its footprint and collaborations with art institutions across India with each edition. AT A GLANCE 12 - 16 February 2020 Don Joao Lawns & Heritage House Calangute-Mapusa Rd, Dias Vaddo, Nagoa, Bardez, Goa. 12 February 2020: Press Preview and Opening Event 13 - 16 February 2020: Open to Public