The Story
OrganizerGovandi's M East Ward is one of Mumbai's most marginalised areas: home to the city's largest resettled population, with over 70% of residents in slums and historically the lowest Human Development Index of any Mumbai ward. The Community Design Agency has worked in the Natwar Parekh Compound, a Resettlement and Rehabilitation colony in Govandi, for eight years through its Neighbourhood Regeneration Project. The Govandi Arts Festival grew from this sustained engagement as a community decision: the community chose to connect, create, and advocate with the rest of Mumbai through arts. The festival's founding as part of India/UK Together 2022-23 gave it an international platform and British Council connections that brought it to broader attention. The second edition in December 2024 demonstrated that it had moved beyond its inaugural moment into a sustained community institution.
Govandi Arts Festival is one of the most culturally significant community arts festivals in India for what it is as much as what it programmes. A festival that centres the creativity and resilience of one of Mumbai's most stigmatised neighbourhoods, run by the community rather than for the community, is a fundamentally different proposition from most arts festivals. Its documentation of Govandi's cultural life, through the festival's exhibitions, films, and performances, creates an archive of a community that is otherwise invisible in Mumbai's cultural narrative.
A community-owned arts festival in one of Mumbai's most marginalised neighbourhoods that reclaims the narrative of Govandi through the creativity of its own youth, women, and transgender artists, with international partnerships that give it genuine cross-cultural reach.
