Tag: Serendipity Arts Festival

TechPulse

Maker’s Asylum Positions Goa as a Global Hub for Creative Innovation

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

Goa’s emergence as India’s Creative Capital is being shaped by communities, creators, and technology-led learning spaces that celebrate imagination and innovation. Within this evolving landscape, Maker’s Asylum has emerged as a key contributor, bringing together young innovators, global creators, and hands-on learning experiences that reinforce the state’s ambition to build a future-ready creative economy.

From its makerspace in Moira, Maker’s Asylum has welcomed students, artists, engineers, and young problem-solvers from across India and abroad who come to Goa not just for its natural beauty, but to build, experiment, and create. Over the last four years, more than 828 students from 15 countries, 150 schools, and 50 cities have travelled to the state to engage with its growing maker culture.

In 2025, ten cohorts of the Innovation School brought over 150 teenagers to Goa for immersive learning in robotics, electronics, fabrication, and product development. Their projects ranged from assistive devices and environmental robotics to AI-based sports solutions, reflecting the programme’s focus on real-world problem-solving. Maker’s Asylum also holds the highest number of OSHWA-certified open-source hardware projects in India, highlighting its commitment to accessible, collaborative innovation.

Looking ahead, the Fellowship for 2026 aims to expand this impact by supporting 100 teenagers from underserved communities across India through a six-month hybrid Innovation School journey. Participants will design and build solutions to pressing social and environmental challenges, with Maker’s Asylum inviting CSR collaborators and donors to help expand full and partial scholarships.

This December, Maker’s Asylum’s work is being highlighted at the 10th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, where it is hosting an eight-day programme of hands-on workshops, conversations, and maker showcases at Art Park, Panjim. By integrating maker culture into one of India’s leading multidisciplinary festivals, the initiative is bringing Goa’s creativity-driven innovation to a diverse national audience until December 21, 2025.

The celebrations will continue on December 28 with the Make Break Create Festival in Moira, a day-long showcase of Goa’s creative energy featuring working prototypes by young innovators, panel discussions on community and cultural spaces, interactive workshops, a makers flea market, and live music celebrating local talent.

Maker’s Asylum’s efforts align with the vision of the Startup and IT Promotion Cell under the Department of Information Technology, Electronics and Communications, led by Minister Shri Rohan A. Khaunte. By bringing global perspectives into local communities and encouraging cross-cultural exchange, the organisation demonstrates how Goa’s environment enables experimentation, innovation, and new ideas.

As Goa continues its journey toward becoming the Creative Capital of India, community-driven ecosystems like Maker’s Asylum highlight how culture, technology, and imagination can come together to shape a resilient, future-ready creative economy.

Events in Goa

Serendipity Arts Festival Transforms Panaji’s Art Park into a Hub of Art, Food, and Community

allycaralgoa

Panaji, December 2025: The Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF), Asia’s largest multidisciplinary art festival, has once again turned Panaji’s Art Park along the riverfront into a dynamic cultural hub. Visitors of all ages have been immersed in a vibrant blend of art, workshops, culinary experiences, and entertainment.

The festival space is thoughtfully designed to cater to varied interests. The western end features the photography exhibits in Feeling Home. Where is Home?, with works ranging from Assavri Kulkarni’s tribal portraits to Anurag Banerjee’s homage to Bombay, drawing visitors into diverse worlds through the lens. Moving inward, the buzz grows louder with interactive workshops, storytelling sessions, and a showcase of Goan culinary traditions.

SAF’s colourful stalls and installations make the festival appealing to schools and families alike. Surekha Gaonkar, a teacher from Bal Bharati Vidyamandir, Ribandar, brought 73 students from standards 1 to 3, saying, “We come to help students learn something new while having fun. There’s so much to do here.”

Students like Nisha Fernandes of Chubby Cheeks High School were equally enthused, exploring workshops such as Changing Charpai and creative storytelling sessions. “It was my first time here, and I had a lot of fun. The Hive workshop helped us learn limericks and poetry, and the charpai installation was fun to climb and play on,” she shared.

Parents, too, found the festival a perfect opportunity to engage with their children while enjoying a safe and relaxing environment. Upen Kumar from Margao said, “I registered my son for storytelling and workshops on emotions and musical instruments while browsing the stalls. Every amenity, from washrooms to guidance, was well taken care of.”

The Serendipity Arts Festival continues to offer an inclusive, engaging, and educational experience, blending celebration, learning, and community bonding in the heart of Panaji.

Events in Goa

A 400-Year-Old Caravaggio Masterpiece Comes Alive at Serendipity Arts Festival Goa

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

Under the patronage of the Embassy of Italy in India, the Consulate General of Italy in Mumbai, the Italian Embassy Cultural Centre New Delhi and the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Mumbai, in collaboration with Serendipity Arts and with the support of MetaMorfosi Cultural Association, the exhibition of Magdalene in Ecstasy by Caravaggio is being presented at the 10th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa. This marks the first time a work by Caravaggio is exhibited in Goa and India, bringing one of the most defining figures of Western art history into direct conversation with a contemporary, multidisciplinary cultural platform.

Painted during Caravaggio’s final, turbulent years while he was fleeing Rome after a fatal duel, Magdalene in Ecstasy captures Mary Magdalene in a moment suspended between spiritual transcendence and human vulnerability. Her tear-streaked face, stripped of ornate symbolism and rendered with stark emotional realism, reflects the artist’s inward turn during the last phase of his life. The work was among the paintings Caravaggio carried with him on his final journey toward a papal pardon that he would never receive.

The painting resurfaced in the early twenty-first century after centuries in relative obscurity and was authenticated by leading scholars, including Mina Gregori. Bearing historical markings linked to papal provenance, the work exemplifies Caravaggio’s radical departure from idealized religious imagery, retaining only the skull and cross as symbols of mortality and faith.

The exhibition was inaugurated on December 14, 2025, by Walter Ferrara, Consul General of Italy in Mumbai; Andrea Anastasio, Director of the Italian Embassy Cultural Centre in New Delhi; Francesca Amendola, Director of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Mumbai; and Smriti Rajgarhia, Director of Serendipity Arts, in the presence of Shrinivas Dempo, Honorary Consul of Italy in Goa, and Rohit Monserrat, Mayor of Panaji. The painting will remain on view until December 21, 2025, at the Directorate of Accounts, a heritage venue within the festival’s city-wide programme.

Within the festival context, Magdalene in Ecstasy is presented in dialogue with contemporary, site-specific installations, underscoring the enduring relevance of Caravaggio’s vision across centuries and cultures. The setting allows history and contemporaneity to intersect, offering audiences a rare opportunity to encounter a classical masterpiece within the living fabric of present-day artistic expression.

Reflecting on the exhibition, Consul General Walter Ferrara described it as a celebration that honours the shared artistic and spiritual heritage of Italy and Goa, while Serendipity Arts Co-Founder and Patron Shefali Munjal noted that the presentation exemplifies the festival’s commitment to fostering dialogue across geographies, time periods and artistic practices. Smriti Rajgarhia emphasized that the arrival of the painting in Goa positions South Asia within global conversations on heritage, creativity and cultural exchange.

Curated by Andrea Anastasio, Director of the Italian Embassy Cultural Centre in New Delhi, and coordinated by the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Mumbai in collaboration with Serendipity Arts, the exhibition stands as a milestone in cultural diplomacy. It reinforces the role of the Serendipity Arts Festival as a platform where historic works and contemporary practices meet, offering audiences an experience that is both reflective and transformative, and reaffirming the power of art to connect histories, cultures and communities across time.

Events in Goa

At Serendipity Arts Festival, a Goa Barge Transforms Into a Floating Exhibition

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

At the 10th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, one of Goa’s iconic ore barges is set to take on an unexpected new role as a floating exhibition. Titled Barge, the installation will be anchored at the Captain of Ports Jetty in Old Goa from December 12, reimagining a vessel long associated with the state’s riverine economy as a space for artistic exploration. Curated by Mumbai-based writer and curator Veeranganakumari Solanki, the project transforms the familiar industrial structure into a participatory environment that listens as much as it speaks, inviting visitors to engage with ideas of presence, absence and sensory perception.

For decades, barges have been an essential part of Goa’s landscape—silently ferrying iron ore along its waterways and shaping the region’s industrial identity since the liberation era and the rise of mechanised mining. By bringing this utilitarian vessel into the realm of contemporary art, the exhibition bridges the gap between the everyday and the imaginative, framing the barge as a site of possibility rather than mere function. Solanki builds on ideas from three earlier Serendipity Arts Festival projects—Future Landing, Synaesthetic Notations and A Haptic Score—each of which explored the ways the human body interprets sensory information. These inquiries continue aboard the barge, where its cavernous architecture becomes a point of departure for artistic response.

Solanki describes the barge as a space defined by absence. Its hollow structure, she notes, creates a cavity where presence can form—whether through sound, memory or imagination. She reflects on how imagination emerges in the gaps between what we perceive and what remains unseen, and how this threshold becomes fertile ground for potentiality. The artists contributing to the exhibition—Prajakta Potnis, Hemant Sreekumar and Julien Segard—work directly with the vessel’s architecture, responding to the interplay of sound, space and material. Their works explore the fragile boundaries between the industrial and the imaginative, offering viewers a space to dwell in uncertainty rather than seek definitive answers.

A central element of Barge is an evolving sound work by artist Alan Rego, who has been studying the acoustic behaviour of the vessel. Rego collects sounds from within the barge and plans to submerge a microphone into the river during his performance, gathering underwater noise that will be processed in real time. Using a programme that breaks noise into frequencies and reshapes them into evolving patterns, he gradually transforms randomness into rhythm, noise into music. For Solanki, this transformation embodies the exhibition’s core idea that presence can emerge from absence and meaning can arise from what first appears incoherent.

Solanki’s curatorial practice has long explored the ways artistic forms converse across public and private spaces. Her experience as a Brooks International Research Fellow at Tate Modern, a resident at Delfina Foundation and her leadership roles at Space Studio and The Gujral Foundation reflects a deep engagement with art’s relationship to environment and community. She now co-directs the SqW:Lab Foundation and serves on the advisory committee of the Piramal Photography Gallery at the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai.

Visitors to Serendipity Arts Festival can experience Barge throughout the event at the Captain of Ports Jetty in Old Goa. The installation stands as an evocative reminder of how imagination can transform the familiar, offering a rare opportunity to step inside a vessel that has shaped Goa’s industrial history and witness it reimagined through the lens of sound, space and sensory inquiry.

Events in Goa

Panjim Transforms into a Living Canvas for the 10th Serendipity Arts Festival

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

The Serendipity Arts Festival, India’s premier multi-disciplinary arts festival, returns to Panjim, Goa for its landmark 10th edition from December 12-21, 2025. This year, the festival transforms the city into a living canvas with immersive exhibitions, dynamic performances, interactive workshops, and public art installations across multiple iconic venues.

At Miramar Beach, the festival unveiled Terra Grove, the latest installation by renowned architect Vinu Daniel. This architectural marvel reimagines public spaces, making them inviting, responsive, and sustainable within Goa’s tropical landscape. Crafted from terracotta Guna tiles, the pavilion provides cooling shade while blending seamlessly with the beachfront, creating a space for both humans and animals. Terra Grove, sometimes called the Kulhad Pavilion, repurposes discarded mud cups, turning waste into a thoughtful, functional work of art. The project builds on Thukral and Tagra’s 2024 initiative, Multiplay, and is supported by Milton and Panjim Smart Cities, emphasizing sustainability and innovative design.

Milton, as the Festival’s sustainability partner, highlighted how installations like Terra Grove align with their commitment to reducing single-use waste and encouraging reusable solutions. Meanwhile, Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited emphasized the festival’s contribution to Panjim’s evolution as a citizen-friendly, culturally vibrant smart city. The festival’s presence over a decade has enriched the city’s social and cultural fabric, connecting contemporary art with Panjim’s historic identity.

Public art takes center stage this year, bringing creativity into everyday spaces and heritage venues across the city. Diptej Vernekar’s Beasts of Reincarnation: Mythical Beings in the City reinvents Goa’s living traditions of effigy-making, while venues such as Art Park, Azad Maidan, and the Old GMC Complex host workshops, performances, and interactive exhibitions. From Multiplay 02: Soft Systems by Thukral & Tagra to craft-focused showcases like Home is Where the Heart Is and Infinite Drape, the festival demonstrates how art in public spaces can spark dialogue, curiosity, and shared ownership.

The festival’s programming extends across multiple nodes of Panjim, including the Directorate of Accounts, PWD Complex, Captain of Ports Jetty (Old Goa), Santa Monica Jetty, and SAG Ground, forming a vibrant cultural circuit that blends installations, performances, culinary projects, and craft exhibitions with the city’s architecture and natural landscape. By integrating formal and everyday spaces, the festival creates an open gallery that welcomes residents, travelers, families, and students to experience art as part of daily life.

Celebrating its 10th edition, the Serendipity Arts Festival continues to champion the belief that art belongs to everyone. From architectural innovation and immersive performances to craft-led exhibitions and hands-on workshops, the festival encourages participation, sparks curiosity, and fosters a sense of community. Visitors can explore the transformative power of art across Panjim’s streets, heritage spaces, and waterfronts, making this edition a truly unforgettable celebration of creativity, culture, and sustainability.