Serendipity Arts Festival 2024: A future-forward event that is rooted in Goa

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Culture as a tool to shape the future—that is the premise underlying the ninth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, all set to take place in Panjim, Goa. The various workshops, performances, conversations and exhibitions—spanning music, dance, theatre, food, craft and visual arts—are looking at our relationship with the body, time, space, community, ecology, and more.

As one pores over the lineup of events and dialogues, there is an introspective feel to this annual interdisciplinary. “In the face of the uncertainties that we are facing as a society, a cultural festival such as this brings us together as a community, shows ways of coexisting, and makes us resilient," says Smriti Rajgarhia, director of the festival and the Serendipity Arts Foundation that helms it. The idea is to look at creative solutions for new problems.

“Liberal arts need to be part of everyone’s lives. In the modern day and age, when everything is about control, culture gives you tools on how that control can be negotiated," she adds. This edition sees some of the curators from past editions return to the festival such as Quasar Thakore Padamsee for theatre and Geeta Chandran for dance, while some of the newer ones such as the collective, Edible Issues—run by Anusha Murthy and Elizabeth Yorke—are adding a new dimension to the dialogue around the culinary arts.