How has the vision for the festival evolved over the years? Has its role in India’s cultural ecosystem changed from when it was conceptualised?When we first conceptualised the Serendipity Arts Festival in 2016, our primary vision was to create a platform that would break down the silos between different art forms and make contemporary arts accessible to wider audiences. Over the years, this vision has deepened and expanded significantly.Initially, we focused on establishing the festival as a multidisciplinary space where visual arts, music, dance, theatre, culinary arts and craft could coexist and inspire cross-pollination. What has evolved is our understanding of the festival’s role as not just a showcase but as an active agent of cultural change in India’s arts ecosystem.Story continues below this adThe festival was meant to be more than purely presentation-focused. We envisioned ourselves to become a platform for commissioning new work, supporting artistic research, and building infrastructure for the arts. It can be witnessed in our commitment towards creating unique pathways for artists, particularly emerging practitioners, and in addressing systemic gaps in arts education and accessibility.Our role over time has also shifted to respond to contemporary contexts. We are deliberately engaging with questions of heritage conservation, public space activation and how traditional practices can remain relevant and sustainable in contemporary times. The festival has moved beyond a single annual event, towards actively building a continuous ecosystem for the arts in India.What have been some of the biggest challenges in sustaining a multidisciplinary arts festival of this scale?Sustaining a multidisciplinary arts festival of this scale presents several ongoing challenges. The first is the sheer complexity of programming across eight disciplines simultaneously; each with its own set of artistic standards, technical requirements, and audience expectations. Coordinating this requires year-round planning and a deeply collaborative team structure. Financial sustainability is always a consideration. While we have the committed support of patrons and partners, creating a festival that’s both artistically uncompromising and accessible to all requires careful resource management and building partnerships with institutions and brands that share our values.Story continues below this adLogistically, working across multiple venues in Goa, transforming public and heritage spaces and managing the technical demands of visionary contemporary work is enormously challenging. We’ve had to build expertise in everything from heritage restoration to digital infrastructure.Perhaps the most subtle challenge is maintaining artistic integrity while remaining accessible. We’re committed to presenting challenging, contemporary work while ensuring it doesn’t alienate audiences. We’ve navigated this through strong curatorial frameworks, extensive public programming, artist talks and creating multiple entry points into the work.We’ve also had to adapt to unforeseen circumstances, for instance, the pandemic years taught us to be more flexible and to think about digital engagement in ways we hadn’t before. Along with that, every year we had to push through the on-ground challenges that were beyond our control such as losing a venue at the last hour, getting our infrastructure burnt due to fire, or a hurricane. Throughout these challenges we adapted and built ourselves back again from scratch. This resilience has actually strengthened the festival’s foundation.Looking back, are there any particular projects that personally stood out for you from the past editions?Story continues below this adThere have been so many memorable moments, but certain projects stand out for their impact and the conversations they sparked. One that remains particularly vivid is Talatum — an Indian contemporary adaptation of The Tempest, a play by William Shakespeare. At the 2016 edition, Talatum unfolded within a circus tent, signaling from the outset the festival’s commitment to reimagining how audiences encounter performance. The choice of venue was deliberate — eschewing traditional theatre spaces for the intimate, charged atmosphere of the big top, where the circular architecture collapsed the distance between performers and spectators. Talatum embodied the experimental spirit of the festival’s first edition, blending the circus’s vocabulary of physicality, spectacle and risk with theatrical storytelling to create something that felt both accessible and adventurous. As Goa’s first major multi-disciplinary arts festival, it sought to break down barriers between art forms and audiences, and Talatum’s tent became a powerful metaphor for this vision: a temporary structure filled with extraordinary possibilities, where diverse crowds gathered to witness performances that defied easy categorisation and left lasting impressions.In 2019, curator Prahlad Sukhtankar brought ‘SEED // OOO Farms’ to the festival for a session that began with the smallest unit of life to address our largest crisis. At a moment when deforestation, unchecked development, and relentless consumerism were pushing ecosystems toward collapse, this workshop turned attention to the seed, the originary force behind every forest, field, and food system.‘The Sacred Everyday’ in the same year extended its exploration beyond the Adil Shah Palace to the Church of Santa Monica, in collaboration with the Museum of Christian Art. This expansion illuminated India’s enduring genius for cultural synthesis, the ability to absorb diverse influences and weave them into something distinctly its own. Nowhere is this more evident than in the religious imagination that has flourished across the subcontinent for millennia.Amitesh Grover’s The Money Opera was showcased in 2022 at the festival. It emerged as a bold experiment in immersive theatre, transforming a five-storey abandoned building into a living, breathing exploration of capitalism’s human cost. This site-specific production invited audiences to navigate an unnamed structure where the architecture itself became a character in the narrative. The way audiences— many experiencing contemporary art for the first time — engaged with it was wonderful to see.Story continues below this adThe craft interventions, of which there have been many over the last decade, have always created a space for dialogue between the traditional practices and new ideas, where master craftspeople working alongside contemporary designers push traditional techniques in new directions. These projects often result in both artistic innovation and economic opportunities for the artisans involved.What makes these projects stand out isn’t just their artistic merit but their ability to generate genuine dialogue — between art forms, between tradition and contemporary practice, between artists and audiences, and between local and global contexts.Community engagement has been integral to the festival. If you could talk a bit about that aspect.Community engagement has never been peripheral to our festival. It is fundamental to our philosophy. From the outset, we’ve believed that the arts shouldn’t exist in isolation but should be woven into the fabric of community life. In Goa, we work closely with local communities year-round, beyond just the festival. We’ve developed educational programs with schools, workshops with local artists and craftspeople, and created opportunities for Goan audiences to engage with visiting artists and ideas. We’ve been intentional about making the festival truly accessible — it is primarily free, spread across the city in locations people already frequent and we provide programming in multiple languages. We want someone who’s never been to an arts festival to feel welcomed, not intimidated.Story continues below this adOur apprenticeship programmes are a key part of community engagement, offering young people from Goa and across India a platform to work alongside established artists and learn through doing. Many of these apprentices have gone on to develop their own practices.We also see our heritage restoration work as community engagement. When we restore a building and activate it through art, we’re not just preserving architecture but creating new community spaces and reestablishing connections to shared history.The culinary arts programming particularly resonates with local communities because it celebrates Goa’s rich food traditions while exploring their evolution. These programmes have become gathering points where generations share knowledge.Community engagement, for us, is about building lasting relationships and reiterating the idea that arts belong to all. Rooted within the cultural fabric, it’s for the community, by the community.Story continues below this adThe Serendipity Arts Foundation has spearheaded the restoration of several heritage buildings in Goa and recently hosted a musical evening at Delhi’s Safdarjung Tomb. Could you talk about this evolving relationship between art, heritage and public spaces through such interventions?Our relationship with heritage spaces has evolved organically but purposefully. We recognise that India has extraordinary heritage sites that are often underutilised or disconnected from contemporary cultural life. That acknowledgement paved a path for us to utilise the opportunities to activate these spaces through art while contributing to their preservation.In Goa, we’ve undertaken the restoration of several Goan-portuguese architecture that were deteriorating. We approached it not just as architectural conservation but as creating a living space for contemporary practice. During the festival, these restored spaces host exhibitions, performances, and workshops, demonstrating that heritage buildings can be dynamic cultural venues, not just museums.The recent musical evening at Delhi’s Safdarjung Tomb marked our presentation of this model beyond Goa. Safdarjung Tomb is an extraordinary 18th-century monument that, despite its architectural significance, isn’t activated for cultural programming regularly. By presenting a carefully curated musical performance there, we aimed to create a dialogue between the site’s historical significance and contemporary artistic expression. We choose venues based on several criteria: their historical and architectural significance, their potential for restoration or activation, their accessibility to diverse audiences, and importantly, whether the intervention can be sustainable. We’re not interested in one-off events that don’t contribute to the long-term cultural or physical health of these spaces.Story continues below this ad Sunil Kant Munjal (Photo: PR Handout)Each intervention is developed in close consultation with conservation experts, heritage authorities, and local communities to ensure we’re preserving while activating. The art we present in these spaces is also carefully considered as we look for work that can create meaningful dialogue with the architecture and history without overwhelming it.Earlier this year, the festival travelled to Birmingham. There has also been announcement of initiatives to be held in Delhi and Dubai. Will we see Serendipity going to other cities as well?As we celebrate the 10th milestone edition, Serendipity Arts brought the festival’s spirit to multiple cities including Birmingham, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Varanasi; while preparing for artistic insertions in other cities such as Chennai, Gurugram, Paris and Dubai.This will be the largest-ever edition in Goa, from December 12 to 21, featuring over 35 curators and over 150 multidisciplinary projects.Story continues below this adThe Birmingham edition earlier this year was significant as our first international iteration. It allowed us to share Indian contemporary arts with UK audiences while also creating opportunities for British-Indian artists and building cross-cultural dialogue. The response was overwhelming and confirmed that our multidisciplinary, accessible model resonates beyond India.The Delhi and Dubai initiatives represent different kinds of insertions. We’re looking at how the festival’s programming and ethos can adapt to different urban contexts and audiences while maintaining its core identity.Delhi, being India’s capital with its rich cultural infrastructure and diverse audiences, offers opportunities for different scales of programming and partnerships with existing institutions. Dubai represents an interesting proposition as a global cultural hub with a significant South Asian diaspora and growing interest in contemporary arts.We’re approaching these artistic interventions carefully. It’s not about replicating the Goa festival in multiple locations, but about understanding what each city needs and how our platform can contribute meaningfully to its cultural ecosystem. We’re asking: What gaps can we fill? What communities can we serve? What artistic exchanges can we facilitate?There are conversations about other cities as well, both in India and internationally, but we’re being strategic. Sustainability – artistic, financial and organisational – is key. What’s exciting is that each new location teaches us something and enriches our understanding of what the festival can be. We’re building a model that’s both rooted in our original vision and flexible enough to respond to different contexts.