Festival and Development

Festivals and their types

Festival is celebration. Historically festival is community's socio-cultural expression and thus unorganized, driven by ritual, religion and lifestyle. Festival also denotes our traditional practice of thanking God for food. For e.g. in an agrarian country like India, the joy and bliss enjoyed at the first rain of the season and the coming of  first paddy of the season etc. which are part of lifestyle and ritual, find their expression in festival.  (Although community may worship God on those days, it is not really a religious one, it is more of ritual.)

In this blog, we are talking of organized art and culture based festivals only and not taken the ritual or religious festivals.

Why village festival is important? 

Village festival celebrating traditional art and culture was conceived to highlight the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) of the village, and was first done by banglanatak dot com in 2010 at three places – Pingla in Paschim Medinipur, Gorbhanga in Nadia and Bamnia in Purulia and then extended to many villages.  Finally in 2018 and 2019 the village festivals took place in 18 villages. (2020 & 2021 - no village festival could be held, except weekend destination promotional campaign held in end Dec 2020, which also got a mention in the Honourable Prime Minister of India’s radio talk in January 2021 (https://youtu.be/aAJpjKVUbHA).   

Village festival, at its inception phase, is important to draw attention of people in the neighbouring villages and also brings recognition and pride to the art form, artists and their village. Then, it attracts local stakeholders including administration and media. After that people in nearby cities (here, Kolkata) get attracted to it and then through mainline & digital media and word of mouth, it reaches national audience and slowly a calendarized village mela evolves as a regular tourism event of that area/ district. Then, it attracts Governmental agencies like Tourism department's promotional groups, and also the tour operators. Interestingly, this is a good case study, as to how to get ICH noticed by world market on its own merit, rather than trying to develop/ reorient products to satisfy market, where the USP is compromised, if not lost. 

Why someone gets attracted to village festival? 

Direct interaction with artists, visiting their villages and experiencing their lifestyle, understanding their work of art, listening to their stories and seeing their performances in their own settings are the main factors which draw audience to villages and village festivals https://youtu.be/SIxKJ3qLPWM. The festival is also a vibrant platform where direct business linkage gets established between the producer and the buyer. And thus, village festivals evolve as community events, a true example of ‘rural common’, and visitors get to know aspects of heritage and nuances of it. Students and teachers love it too as this is a chance of edutainment based heritage education. Elderly people love it as it offers them satisfaction that the traditional art forms still survive. It also gives an interesting perspective of community empowerment, women participation and automatically creates networks where visitors return to the villages helping artists to market their products directly to the customers. Overall, it is a highlight of experiential tourism.

Why the community is interested in organizing village festival?

It gives a voice to community, thus an interesting perspective of community empowerment, women participation and automatically creates direct contacts with visitors opening up new avenues, and strengthens opportunity for all the artists irrespective of quality, age and disability. It also creates opportunity for the non artist members of the artists’ family to explore other income option during the festival. The festival brings pride and recognition initially to the village and artists, then to the neighbourhood including media, local Panchayats & Block offices and finally to the district/ state tourism. It certainly is a good way of showing opportunities hands-on, encouraging grass-root Entrepreneurship, which finally leads to boosting Creative economy while safeguarding traditional art forms, and evolves as a good vehicle for sustainable development

What are the things which are needed for a village to hold such melas?

Visitors are always inquisitive regarding the history of the art and craft forms and experiential tourism is a new product by itself globally. Thus, a folk art centre with community museum really helps. In West Bengal, MSME&T did it as part of Rural Craft and Cultural Hub project https://youtu.be/gLiHfzT21es. We also developed a Baul Ashram at Bannabagram in East Bardhaman https://youtu.be/EouaMze6wGU and assisted a local theatre group in strengthening a theatre village in West Bardhaman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwdK8fNA6sU & a Gandhi Ashram at Nimdih bordering Purulia and everywhere we host regular festivals celebrating local practicing/ traditional art forms.

Toilet block in the art & culture villages and some eateries and staying places nearby are certainly a big need. At few places like Pingla in West Medinipur, local entrepreneurs have come forward in building guest houses and eateries. But in this hard component section, an external support (like Government’s any relevant department) will certainly be a boost. Also, utilities like wifi connection, helps in accessing the world benefitting both the artists and the willing world and also opens up new opportunities like heritage education and helps in creating aspirations among the local youth. 

Also it is important to note that festivals are excellent places to spread the education on Geographical Indication (GI), IP (Intellectual property) and rights of artists, Creative Commons attributes and sharing digital nuances like hashtags, locational identity, artist’s name etc amongst photographers/ AV promoters. AV/ photographs/ media/ bloggers are of big time promotional catalysts of these villages to the world.

(Interested ones may like to see this document, https://hipamsindia.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/IPR-Policy-Brief.pdf).

Is this tourism ‘home stay’ based?

No, artists don’t have much of space at home, except like Gorbhanga in Nadia, where artists offer stay to visitors, but not really with the nuances of home stay. Thus, current promotional strategy followed is day-tour, except places where folk art centres exist in rural Bengal with an option of simple stay for visitors. In some cases like Charida in Purulia, a good stay option is made available by a local NGO in the neighbourhood. But, a strategy needs to be evolved ensuring more benefits to the artists families with grass-root entrepreneurship strengthening and with financial assistance provided to them.

 

What is the USP of this tourism?

Artists are at the nucleus of this tourism, not a bystander of the usual tourism. Thus, all benefits go to them directly.

 

How does village festival ensure sustainability?

Overall, village festivals ensure highlighting the effort of rural cultural practitioners, bring pride and recognition to them, facilitates economic benefits, encourages them to participate in development process, motivates 'togetherness' & cleanliness at villages, ensures participation of all and opportunity for all, encourages next generation to pursue the art forms. Thus, even if scholars kept on referring these art forms as dying art forms, but in reality we have seen the art forms where intervention happened are live and kicking and able to increase both in terms of quantity and quality multi-fold and certainly has reduced abuses of substances. Financially, some support is certainly needed (for rural Bengal, it still needs the support), but other skills related to festivals including making the village ready for festivals, handling invitation, hosting festival etc can be built amongst willing ones and community is able to run it smooth. We opted for this Build-Operate-Transfer mode and succeeded.       

 

Can anyone do village festival just like that?

No, a standalone village festival is not much of use. Investment in people is the key to ensure benefit to communities and village festival is just a component. It is like the old saying, “never create a demand, unless supply is assured”. Thus, a lot of preparatory work is needed on ground, before thinking of a festival.

Preparing community for tourism is a big task, a process by itself too. Villagers need exposure first, when they go out for first time they are extremely nervous, then slowly they pick –up manners and confidence. Similarly, village leaders also evolve with time, on first look, an apparent art-form leader may not be the real one for community leadership. Then once it is in the process of stabilizing, it’s a good time to host village festival.

 

After all, village festival is a celebration, not a celebration of poverty, but celebration of growth and thus we recommend in hosting celebrating village festivals it when the traditional artists community is ready. 

 

Should there be a cluster / cooperative first?

Not really. We are against imposing urban educated ideas on rural ICH practitioners. Let the need of forming informal association evolve, then let it get formalized according to their desire. But we strongly feel as traditional work is family based, don’t pressurize them for collective based business, because it helps you in handling and doing financial transactions. How to do business with them, is your mandate. They are happy in their own life celebrating their art and culture. Let festivals continue, let happiness prevail.

 

What is the role of others Festivals?

All festivals bring pride and recognition to artists and also create opportunities for the artists. Unlike village festivals, other festivals are in a different category altogether and needs to be planned/ curated keeping quality and objective in mind.

In International Festivals local artists get the opportunity to be on the same platform with the global artists which help them in reaching out to a different class of elite, who otherwise wouldn’t have looked at these 'sub-altern forms'. Evidently, it has resulted in a fruitful outcome here too. We conceived Sufi Sutra in 2011 (new name Sur Jahan) and held it regularly till 2020 https://youtu.be/hgcqMw3DrNs. And this has created opportunities for local musicians worldwide and has resulted in many collaborations between local and global musicians https://youtu.be/Acdvazdlg4M. We have also used this platform to showcase folk festival and handicraft carnival and has resulted in both on-spot business, network building and future connects many of which resulted in invitation from respective countries/ states. We organized folk festivals in many cities including in Goa, Karnataka, Mumbai and of course in West Bengal. Int'l festivals also attract Radio journalists, magazines and their report help local artists to earn global recognition and make the world aware of their talents and also on their art forms. Festivals with non-ticketed tag also help in celebrating cultural diversity with the  mantra of  'culture for all, culture  for peace'. A quality people’s festival also adds a strong branding to the host organization.

 

Is there any supporting data?

Yes, quite a few external evaluations have taken place including one report by a UK agency in Jan 2020. Also this brief AV will show some glimpses of it https://youtu.be/1J-4GkF00iE.

 

Festival as a tool for community development

ICH of a village has the potential of evolving like a pond in the village which also supplies water to the neighbourhood, which can improve the creative economy and regenerate the rural poor along with raising aspirations of the new generations (ref: Amitava Bhattacharya’s talk at World ICH Forum 2021, https://youtu.be/zNvH_w7Vg8M). And, both village festivals and other festivals are key to achieve it, provided we respect the artists’ rights, understand the value of our heritage, safeguard it, develop micro-entrepreneurship, create experiential, ethical, responsible & sustainable tourism destinations and finally keep a strong monitoring mechanism to collect data on regular basis (including sales and contacts generated/ network created at various melas and village melas) and measure holistic ROI (return on Investment) (not component based ROI).

 

 Author: Amitava Bhattacharya, Founder Director, banglanatak dot com, amitava@banglanatak.com