Innovation doesn’t necessarily imply the abandonment of traditions.
With this aim in mind, the Serendipity Arts Festival, an annual event, has become synonymous with an “open, unconventional and porous space” where technology is used for preserving India’s heritage through artistic storytelling.
A confluence of creativity, culture, and diversity, this festival serves as a common point for creative practices that welcome participation from all over the world. The only multi-disciplinary arts festival in India, Serendipity, is also an inclusive space to inspire audiences with captivating performances by talented artists across all disciplines and backgrounds.
Origins of Serendipity Arts Festival
Serendipity was originally a bookstore run by the founder-patron Sunil Kant Munjal’s late wife. Realising the absence of a truly interdisciplinary platform, Munjal was motivated to fill the void with the idea of a festival that would inspire empathy and bring societal transformation.
This is how the Serendipity Arts Festival of Goa materialised in 2016 and became a popular “space for conversation, experimentation and relationship-building.” Set along a beautiful, historical and culturally relevant venue in Panjim, Goa, the influence of the art festival has been tremendous in the contemporary Indian art scene.
With its roots in South Asia, this event aims to bridge the local and the global by fostering a dialogue between the two. With mini-editions organised abroad, the Indian spirit is always meant to reside at the heart of Serendipity.
Serendipity Arts Festival 2024
Have a glimpse into the Serendipity Arts Festival 2024 to understand why visitors from all walks of life do not want to miss out on the event:
Sustainability, community engagement, and accessibility were the themes celebrated at the festival in 2024. It challenged the traditional ways of interacting with art and encouraged visitors to acknowledge creativity as an integral part of their experience.
While an open setup invited people to share their perspectives without the fear of judgment, pop-up installations welcomed visitors to interact in ways previously unknown. More than 1,800 artists collaborated in over 200 projects in 2024, blurring the lines between art and life.
The festival was a huge success, more because of how the audience felt deeply connected with the extraordinary delivery of performing and performance arts. While local narratives and traditional crafts were a part of the workshops, the culinary arts were focused on reviving Goan traditions, promoting sustainability.
Overall, the surreal experience of the Serendipity Festival in 2024 made visitors realise that art can be explored in unexpected ways with music, food, and movement. An installation with a voiceover in the background narrated how the Prussian blue was discovered, the very pigment, when combined with sulphuric acid, creates the deadly poison, cyanide, that was used in the gas chambers at Auschwitz in Germany.
In general, Indian artists like Zarina Hashmi have mostly explored poignant themes of migration and loss of family during exile, and even contemporary creators like Mritunjay, through his work, The House Blue, raise vital questions of homelessness as part of their collaborative narrative-based theatrical performance in the art festival.
Serendipity Arts Festival 2025
2025 is going to be the 10th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, organised by the non-profit Serendipity Arts Foundation. Whether it’s the visual arts, live performances, folk dance of Goa, theatre, food, or site-specific installations along the Mandovi River, this festival in December is going to be highly engaging for spectators.
Even the culinary arts project will be a part of the event, since Goa is renowned for its scrumptious cuisine and refreshing cocktails. Works from renowned contemporary artists like TN Tallur, Prajakta Potnis, and Julien Segard will be a part of the major event.
The upcoming plans of the Serendipity Arts Festival 2025 include paying a tribute titled “Ustaad” to the famous late Indian tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. A new curatorial team of 35 leading voices, the largest panel in its history, is expected to program the tenth edition of the festival as in previous editions.
Futures in Formation: A Public Art Programme is a new collaborative initiative and a big opportunity meant to expand the public realm of art with certain practices. The festival will be globally expanded to 10 popular cities abroad, including Birmingham, UK, where the ecosystem allows the intersection of vibrant communities and dynamic public culture.
Birmingham is a place where people are mostly of South Asian origin and, therefore not an offbeat destination for an art fest. The program will be exploring the following themes regarding the public domain of art:
1. How does the public domain amplify the idea of a community?
2. How does public art explore the intertwined relationships between the ecology and the built environments?
3. How can public art bridge the past with the present and successfully voice dissent via a new discourse?
4. How can art foster a dialogue between cultures and merge tradition with modernity?
5. How to expand the concept of a site beyond the physicality of space and rethink its new interpretations?
6. How can public art build awareness and ensure accessibility for diverse bodies or critique norms that govern public spaces?
Bottom Line
In a world where art feels distant, the Serendipity Arts Festival has been successful in creating an encompassing space for art enthusiasts where they can feel welcome. With this interdisciplinary program, passionate audiences unite under a hub where art is made accessible to all.
Whether it’s about offering fellowships, encouraging practices that benefit both humans and the planet, or organising an event like SAF 2025, each artist needs to be supported and rewarded in their relentless pursuit of achieving their dreams!