Tag: Serendipity Arts Festival 2025

Events in Goa

Serendipity Arts Festival 2025 Concludes 10th Edition with a Grand, Multidisciplinary Finale

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

The Serendipity Arts Festival 2025 drew to a memorable close in Panaji, marking the conclusion of its landmark 10th edition with a sweeping celebration of artistic expression across disciplines. Over ten days, the festival transformed Goa’s public spaces, heritage buildings, and cultural venues into hubs of creativity, dialogue, and community engagement, reaffirming its place as one of India’s most significant multidisciplinary arts festivals.

As the festival concluded, the Hon’ble Governor of Goa, Shri Pusapati Ashok Gajapathi Raju, accompanied by Mr. Sunil Kant Munjal, Founder Patron of Serendipity Arts, visited several festival venues across the city. Their walkthrough included Azad Maidan, the Old PWD Building, the Directorate of Accounts, the Old GMC Complex, and Art Park, where they interacted with artists, curators, and members of the festival team. The visit highlighted the festival’s expansive programming and its meaningful engagement with public and heritage spaces, underscoring its role in enriching Goa’s cultural landscape.

The closing day featured a series of standout performances across music and theatre. The Arena at Nagalli Hills hosted a vibrant finale curated by Sneha Khanwalkar, bringing together artists including Mulla Altaf Raja Ebrahim, Jasbir Jassi, Sunetra Banerjee, Maithili Shome, Zoheb Husain Khan, and Gaurav Pawankumar Khullar. The concert blended beloved tracks with bold sonic experimentation, delivering a colourful, playful, and energetic conclusion that left audiences exhilarated.

Theatre programming concluded at the Old GMC Complex with Bob Marley from Kodihalli, curated by Sankar Venkateswaran. The Kannada production drew inspiration from the legacy of reggae icon Bob Marley to examine questions of identity, freedom, and caste through a compelling mix of Brechtian theatre and musical interludes, inviting audiences to reflect on marginalised voices and social realities.

Music continued to resonate across venues with the Nagaland Madrigal Singers performing at Dinanath Mangeshkar Kala Mandir. The 19-member choir presented a repertoire spanning classical sacred works, Naga and Asian folk music, international folk songs, and contemporary compositions, showcasing their artistic versatility and cultural heritage. The same venue hosted Spirit and Harmony: A Christmas Special, curated by Ranjit Barot, which ushered in the festive season with a grand big-band production celebrating iconic holiday music in a visually rich setting.

The River Raag series concluded with Manganiyar Parampara at Santa Monica Jetty, where Manganiyar musicians from Rajasthan performed against the backdrop of the Mandovi River. The sunset cruise performance wove together folk traditions, nature, and spirituality, offering a poetic and reflective conclusion as music flowed alongside the river.

Throughout the final day, visitors continued to engage with exhibitions and installations that remained open across venues. These included Multiplay 02: Soft Systems, The Culinary Odyssey of Goa, What Does Loss Taste Like?, Home is Where the Heart is, Infinite Drape, Stepwells: Poetry in Craft, and Hands, Tools, and the Living Thread, among many others. A photography exhibition exploring the evolving idea of home brought together five photographers whose works reflected personal and intergenerational perspectives on belonging.

The festival’s commitment to inclusivity remained central until the very end. The Children’s Programme at Art Park concluded with storytelling sessions, workshops, and interactive experiences, while accessibility initiatives at The Access Village continued through exhibitions, sensory spaces, and workshops designed to ensure an inclusive festival experience for all.

As Serendipity Arts Festival 2025 came to a close, it left behind ten days of artistic exploration that celebrated diversity, innovation, and dialogue. Spanning theatre, music, visual arts, craft, photography, culinary arts, and accessibility programming, the festival once again demonstrated the transformative power of the arts to bring people together and reimagine shared cultural spaces.

Events in Goa

Young Culinary Talent Brings Goan Food Traditions Alive at Serendipity Arts Festival 2025

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

Students and faculty of the Verna-based Kamaxi College of Culinary Arts brought Goan culinary heritage to the forefront at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2025, curating an immersive food experience as part of the festival’s Culinary Odyssey. Centered on Gaud Saraswati Brahmin cuisine, the initiative offered festival-goers a rare opportunity to engage with one of Goa’s lesser-known yet deeply rooted food traditions.

Guided by Chef Anjali Prabhu Walavalkar, students Kotha Krishna Sai, Nihal Naik, Aaditya Verlekar and Parshuram Chalwadi stepped out of the classroom and into a high-energy festival environment. They not only prepared and served time-honoured dishes but also interacted closely with visitors, explaining ingredients, techniques and cultural contexts behind each preparation. The live setting challenged them to manage service, maintain consistency and communicate stories through food, mirroring the realities of professional culinary spaces.

For visitors, the stall became more than a place to eat—it became a space of discovery, where flavours opened conversations about tradition, memory and identity. The warmth and confidence with which the young chefs presented the cuisine reflected both pride in their heritage and the depth of their training.

The initiative underscored Kamaxi College of Culinary Arts’ experiential learning approach, where education extends beyond textbooks and kitchens into real-world platforms. By placing students at the heart of a major cultural festival, the college reinforced the idea that preserving regional cuisines goes hand in hand with nurturing the next generation of culinary professionals. Through skill, curiosity and storytelling, these young chefs demonstrated how tradition can thrive when passed on with care and creativity.

Events in Goa

SAF 2025 Culinary Curators Spotlight Disappearing Salts and Vanishing Fish-Fry Aromas from Goa’s Kitchens

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

Goa’s culinary heritage is steadily thinning under the pressures of tourism, urbanisation and changing lifestyles, according to experts presenting their work at the Serendipity Arts Festival 2025. While the erosion may appear gradual, its signs are increasingly visible — from drying salt pans and fading neighbourhood aromas to the quiet disappearance of everyday food knowledge from modern kitchens.

This year’s culinary section brings together four curators — Thomas Zacharias, Prahlad Sukhtankar, Odette Mascarenhas, and the Edible Issues duo of Anushka Murthy and Elizabeth Yorke — who collectively turn the festival into a living archive of what Goa still remembers, and what it risks forgetting.

Chef Prahlad Sukhtankar’s project, Salt, confronts one of Goa’s most tangible losses. Once home to more than 75 salt pans, the state today has barely five main areas of salt production, he says, pointing to generational shifts and land-use changes that are erasing a craft central to Goa’s khazan landscapes. Expanding the lens nationally, Sukhtankar notes that while India once had around 130 indigenous salts, only 30 to 35 are available today, with his team able to source just 18 varieties for the exhibition. Goa’s marine salts, he explains, stand apart for their brininess and the unmistakable scent of the sea — a sensory quality inland salts cannot replicate.

While salt traces what is disappearing from the land, Edible Issues’ Smell Rooms captures what is vanishing from the air. Murthy and Yorke attempt what may be Goa’s first olfactory archive of food heritage, mapping the state through scents that once shaped everyday life. Asking residents what has changed over the past decade, Yorke says many spoke of how fish frying once announced itself across neighbourhoods, making it easy to tell who was cooking what. In today’s air-conditioned homes and sanitised kitchens, those smells are fading, turning scent into memory — one that now needs preservation.

For chef Thomas Zacharias and The Locavore, the focus shifts to imagining the future through absence. His installation asks what India might taste like in the year 2100, when food traditions and agricultural diversity thin out further. Collaborating with Immerse and Quasar Thakore Padmasee, the project reflects on loss at both the farm and cultural levels, questioning how much flavour and knowledge can disappear before it is noticed.

Odette Mascarenhas turns attention inward, excavating Goa’s pre-chilli culinary history across five communities — Hindu artisans, Gaud Saraswat Brahmins, Muslim families, Christian kitchens and Indo-Russo homes. By cooking Goan food without chillies, she reconstructs what the cuisine looked like before Portuguese influence, while also highlighting how everyday home-cooked dishes are steadily disappearing from public spaces as tourism and urban tastes reshape the state’s food narrative.

Together, the four curators transform Serendipity’s culinary showcase into a powerful ledger of loss and possibility — documenting what Goa stands to lose, while quietly asking whether it is still willing to listen, remember and reclaim its edible past.

Events in Goa

Poland Brings Sculpture, Jazz and Theatre to Serendipity Arts Festival 2025

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

As the Serendipity Arts Festival marks its landmark 10th anniversary edition in 2025, the Polish Institute in New Delhi joins the celebrations, signalling an important moment for deepening cultural dialogue between Poland and India. This participation opens pathways for long-term collaboration at both institutional and artistic levels, strengthening ties across contemporary art practices.

The presence of the Polish Institute at the festival represents a significant step towards establishing sustained Polish engagement with one of South Asia’s fastest-growing multidisciplinary arts festivals. By presenting Polish artists across sculpture, music and theatre, the initiative creates opportunities for future residencies, joint productions, curatorial exchanges and collaborative projects between the two countries.

Renowned Polish sculptor Tomasz Koclęga presents Suspensio Spiritualis (Spiritual Suspension) at the Art Park from 14 to 21 December 2025. A leading figure in contemporary figurative sculpture and Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Koclęga is known for his expressive monumental works that explore the human body as a site of emotional and spiritual tension. At the festival, he showcases three striking white sculptures, each standing between two and three metres tall and crafted in polyester resin. The works depict human figures interacting with oversized heads, symbolising intellect, consciousness and spirituality, creating a powerful visual and contemplative presence amid the greenery of the Art Park. The exhibition is presented with the support of the Polish Institute in New Delhi.

Polish improvised music takes centre stage with a live jazz concert by Warsaw-based quartet LIGHT STAR GUIDING on 15 December 2025 at the Art Park. Active since 2018, the ensemble blends electro, trance, folk and free jazz, drawing inspiration from the raw energy of the 1970s while shaping a contemporary soundscape. The line-up includes Ray Dickaty on tenor saxophone and flute, Mikołaj Poncyljusz on electric guitar, Michał Załęski on keyboards, Moog and bass, and Dominik Mokrzewski on drums. The performance forms part of the “Jazz Po Polsku – Around the World / Asia Stop” tour, co-funded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland and carried out by the JAZZ PO POLSKU Foundation, with support from the Polish Institute in New Delhi. The Panjim concert marks the conclusion of the band’s India tour.

Adding a strong theatrical and technological dimension, acclaimed Polish theatre director and multimedia artist Krzysztof Garbaczewski participates in the SEA – Serendipity Exchange for the Arts on 19 and 20 December 2025 at the Old GMC Complex. Known for his experimental approach and integration of theatre with video, virtual reality and immersive technologies, Garbaczewski brings a critical international perspective to the exchange. SEA runs parallel to the festival as a delegate programme connecting artists, curators, producers and arts managers from across Asia and beyond. His participation opens discussions on new technologies and immersive art practices, laying the groundwork for future Polish–Indian collaborations, including performance projects that explore artificial intelligence and digital tools.

Together, these presentations underline Poland’s dynamic contribution to Serendipity Arts Festival 2025, celebrating artistic excellence while building a foundation for enduring cultural collaboration between Poland and India.

Events in Goa

IPRS Sets the Stage for Artistic Excellence and Creator Empowerment at Serendipity Arts Festival 2025

Tanisha Cardozo

Written by Tanisha Cardozo || Team Allycaral

The Indian Performing Right Society (IPRS) is set to play a defining role in shaping conversations around artistic excellence and creator empowerment at the 10th edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival 2025 in Goa. From December 15 to 20 at Azad Maidan, Panaji, the IPRS Stage will once again become a vibrant platform celebrating India’s musical diversity, evolving soundscape, and the creators who drive it.

The IPRS Stage offers a rare space where regional, folk, traditional, and emerging artists from across the country come together to connect with wider audiences beyond their local geographies. The platform not only celebrates performance but also reinforces the importance of access, recognition, and opportunity for music creators in an ever-changing industry.

The stage opened on December 15 with the Vayali Bamboo Band, whose handcrafted bamboo instruments and ecologically rooted soundscapes set the tone for a programme rooted in creativity and cultural consciousness. On December 17, audiences will witness Gulabi Vinyl, a collaboration between vocalist Vidhya Gopal and poet Alok Ranjan Srivastava, blending thumri, dadra, ghazal and classic Hindi melodies with contemporary expression. The musical journey continues on December 18 with Beintehaan: A Musical Harvest, curated by songwriter and filmmaker Mayur Puri, weaving together Kajri, dohas, Sufi kalaams, indie-folk sensibilities and original compositions.

On December 19, Shahbaaz Hussain Khan of the centuries-old Gwalior Gharana will lead Rooh-e-Qawwali, bringing the spiritual energy of Sufi devotion and collective expression to the stage. The showcase culminates on December 20 with Dashugs, a dynamic Ladakhi band whose powerful, community-driven sound reflects the emerging creative voices from the Himalayan region.

Sharing IPRS’ broader vision, CEO Rakesh Nigam highlighted that the IPRS Stage at Serendipity Arts Festival marks an important milestone in celebrating India’s creative spirit while building an inclusive music ecosystem. As IPRS deepens its engagement with the artistic community in Goa this December, the initiative underscores a future where creators are not only celebrated on stage but also empowered beyond it, ensuring that India’s cultural legacy continues to evolve with purpose and pride.