“Arts and culture are a great way to build a city brand, in more ways than one,” says V Ravichandar, chief facilitator of BLR Hubba, a city-wide festival, now in its third edition, which will run in Bengaluru from January 16 to 25.
The Hubba, therefore, is a stepping stone towards creating a larger Bengaluru brand that goes beyond startups, technology, traffic and garbage or even the old monikers of garden city and pensioners’ paradise, says Ravichandar, who believes that “ we should (also) be known as a happening place for art and culture.”
The Hubba, a clever play on the words “habba”, which means festival in Kannada, and “hub”, something Bengaluru is in so many ways, offers nearly 354 multidisciplinary events spread across several venues and across 10 days.
Some of these include a Kannada performance of Medea, Roysten Abel’s The Manganiyar Seduction, an art exhibition titled Holding Pattern by city-based artist Ravikumar Kashi, Tholpavakoothu (shadow puppetry) by Vipin V, Padmini Chettur’s Varnam, a concert by Marty Friedman and even an AI and mathematics session by Yang-Hui He, a Fellow at the London Institute.
The hubba is a multidisciplinary event
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Special Arrangement
The festival, anchored by UnboxingBLR, is divided into 12 sub-festivals — Kala Hubba, Kantha Hubba, Nataka Hubba, Churumuri Hubba, Thindi Hubba and so on — each curated by a different person “so that there is clear ownership,” Ravichandar says. It also makes it easier to identify the events one is interested in, since the names of the subfestival indicate what it primarily focuses on, whether it is visual art, storytelling, music or theatre.
Roysten Abel’s The Manganiyar Seduction will be performed as part of the hubba
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Special Arrangement
After all, “this festival is about diversity of choices,” says Ravichandar, pointing out that taking art to public spaces automatically democratises it, bringing in people from across society’s strata. “We are a civilisation built on bazaar culture, where communities frequently meet to shop, gossip, and do things together. This collective get-together is the essential nature of what we are, and that is manifested physically in what I would call public spaces accessible to all, with no entry barriers.”
Marty Friedman
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Special Arrangement
One of the primary inspirations of the Hubba is the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the world’s largest arts festival, which has transformed this “honestly nothing, cold, dreary Scottish city” into a “very hip and cool one.”
While, of course, this festival is much smaller than the Fringe, “in terms of unique programs, we are one-tenth of Edinburgh, the raison d’être is similar. Through these initiatives, you can build a larger city brand,” says Ravichandar, who also sees Kochi-Muziris Biennale and Goa’s Serendipity Arts Festival as having inspired the team.
The difference between the Hubba and Serendipity, Ravichandar says, is that “Serendipity is run by a set of people in Delhi who go to Goa to run the festival, and tourists from everywhere go to Goa. So, it is not a local festival.” The Hubba, on the other hand, is local, meant primarily for the Bengalurean, though, “if people from elsewhere wish to come, they are welcome to.”
V Ravichandar
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Special Arrangement
All events at the BLR Hubba are open to the public and can be accessed with either free passes offered on a first-come, first-served basis or donor passes priced between ₹250 and ₹450. The logic of having this equal split between free and paid passes, says Ravichandar, is to predict turnout. “The donor pass is a mechanism for crowd control and estimation. After the KSCA event, we wanted to make sure that there is some discipline.”
BLR Hubba will be held in the city between January 16 and 25 at multiple locations. Log in to https://blrhubba.in for more details.
