Connections through Culture: India-Wales

Festival of Voice, Cardiff’s international arts festival, in partnership with Jodhpur Riff, an International folk music festival in Rajasthan will develop a collaborative project led by  women artists from Wales and India. The lead artists are Laura Tofarides and Mahima Dayal Mathu. Laura is a Welsh speaking stop-motion animator based in Cardiff, South Wales. Mahima Dayal Mathu, professionally known as Bawari Basanti, is a Hindustani classical and folk singer-songwriter from New Delhi, India.  

The co-developed piece will explore themes of representation and issues directly related to artists’ lived experiences through music, spoken word, animation and language. It will consider challenges of working across borders in different cultural contexts, the use of digital technologies in order to break down barriers to participation for women and to develop long-term sustainable collaboration.

Ziro Festival of music in the Arunachal Pradesh region of India partners with Wrexham’s FOCUS Wales for a music exchange programme to develop new collaborative work between Welsh and Indian artists across art forms. Through an online festival, workshops and residency programme focused on knowledge and skills exchange, collaboration, dialogue and showcasing, it aims to build strong cultural relationships and inclusive spaces that celebrate diversity and promote Welsh and Indian independent music.

An artist collaboration and development project with Wales based Theatr Iolo, a young-persons’ theatre company in partnership with Hyderabad Children’s Theatre Festival that will engage Indian and Welsh theatre artists through research, mentorship and co- development of a children’s theatre piece. The project includes skills sharing, workshops and will encourage theatre groups and individual  practitioners in Hyderabad to create high quality children’s theatre productions and establish a model for collaboration. It is hoped that Theatr Iolo will be able to visit the Hyderabad Children’s Theatre Festival in 2021 to make connections with practitioners in India and to gain a richer understanding of organising their own future international theatre festival in Wales.

Singer-songwriter and Welsh Music Prize winner Gareth Bonello will work with Jodhpur RIFF roots music festival to develop a three-region collaboration with musicians from Wales, the Khasi Hills of Meghalaya and Rajasthan. The project will develop a new piece of music through an online collaboration and a short film that will be  shown at Jodhpur RIFF 

A collaborative project and exchange between Diffusion festival in Wales and Chennai Photo Biennale in India with five commissioned photo-artists in Wales and India. The photo-artists are Dipanwita Saha, Palani Kumar, Tarun Bhartiya, Sebastián Bustamante and Huw Alden Davies. By working on cross-cultural dialogues, the artists will explore the theme of 'Nation State' and the surrounding socio-political intersectionality responding to the crises of our time through lens-based art interventions, installations, discussions and talks. This collaboration aims to encourage the sharing of ideas, ideologies and building collective consciousness towards both countries’ histories and cultures and will be showcased at both festivals.