In the last week of June 2024, I had the privilege to be invited for Glastonbury Festival UK as part of Greenfield's Diversity Artist programme!! Watch the film above to learn more about the Greenfields and the experience.
Since the beginning of my practice, I have worked with teams organising art festivals of various scales in public spaces, from six editions of Art in Transit's Festival of Stories in Bangalore's metro stations and city parks to co-curating the inaugural Govandi Arts Festival with Community Design Agency. Through these experiences, I have come to view festivals as a powerful cultural tool for discourse and inquiry in urban contexts. As artistic-civic interventions, art and cultural festivals possess immense potential to bring together diverse practitioners, citizens, and decision-makers, to creatively generate a collective purpose and collaborative action that is often absent in urban development practices.
Through this exposure visit to Glastonbury festival, I witnessed this on a much larger, global scale. Spanning the vast fields of Somerset, the festival transforms the area into a temporary city for five days, where people camp together and make the festival their home. With workshops, theatre performances, food, and music, the festival offers an alternate life of joy while also grounding you in the realities of the world. Above all, it was the people I serendipitously met there who made the greatest difference to me, both personally and professionally.
This also became an opportunity to take a part of Govandi to Glastonbury. With the youth of Govandi we co-created an 15ft x 6ft artwork, reading Haq se, Govandi (Govandi, my pride), that travelled to Glastonbury.
Since the beginning of my practice, I have worked with teams organising art festivals of various scales in public spaces, from six editions of Art in Transit's Festival of Stories in Bangalore's metro stations and city parks to co-curating the inaugural Govandi Arts Festival with Community Design Agency. Through these experiences, I have come to view festivals as a powerful cultural tool for discourse and inquiry in urban contexts. As artistic-civic interventions, art and cultural festivals possess immense potential to bring together diverse practitioners, citizens, and decision-makers, to creatively generate a collective purpose and collaborative action that is often absent in urban development practices.
Through this exposure visit to Glastonbury festival, I witnessed this on a much larger, global scale. Spanning the vast fields of Somerset, the festival transforms the area into a temporary city for five days, where people camp together and make the festival their home. With workshops, theatre performances, food, and music, the festival offers an alternate life of joy while also grounding you in the realities of the world. Above all, it was the people I serendipitously met there who made the greatest difference to me, both personally and professionally.
This also became an opportunity to take a part of Govandi to Glastonbury. With the youth of Govandi we co-created an 15ft x 6ft artwork, reading Haq se, Govandi (Govandi, my pride), that travelled to Glastonbury.
Magic created by Samyuktha, Sana, Tayaba, Zaibun, Sakina, Mansi, Aishwarya and yours truly
Click here to watch the making of the artwork for Glastonbury
As part of this exposure visit, we co-created this artwork with the Govandi’s youth that travelled all the way to Glastonbury. Our very own rapper from Govandi Moin Khan @khichikbysultaan ‘s rap Haq se, Govandi loosely translating to Govandi my pride has become a hook for our festival since day 1, and we wanted to take this pride to Glastonbury!
A special mention goes to Dee Moxon, lead artist from Lamplighters Bristol CIC, for bringing all of this together. Our collaboration, which began with the Govandi Arts Festival under the British Council 's India/UK Together Season of Culture, has blossomed into a wonderful friendship. Together, we are either writing artist grants, cooking meals, or exploring new ways to continue our collaboration.
A huge thanks to Etty Elliot and Toby Elliot, artistic directors of Greenfields, for being amazing hosts and making sure that my first visit to Glastonbury is a tad bit less overwhelming.
