Festivals

The annual STEAM Fest organised by Yuvabe Education at Deepanam School in Auroville was held on 6th April 2024. Once again the fest captured the imagination of students and families alike.

This year’s AUM (Auroville Underground Music) Festival, organised by Youth Center, YouthLink and Svaram on March 16 and 17, featured two days of live music and performances by artists from in and around Auroville.

As usual, February has experienced a plethora of cultural and other events. These included performances by the Auroville Choir, an international conference on the revival and promotion of Sanskrit, a four day gathering in Unity Pavilion entitled Toward a Collective Awakening: Experiments in Evolution conceived as a follow-up to the Summit held in Auroville in February 2023 to facilitate consciousness change at a collective, The Auroville Festival – a weeklong festival including discussions on diverse topics and daily cultural performances – the Shakti Kumbh event in Unity Pavilion entitled Regenerative Renaissance of Mother India: Revitalising Bharata Shakti, three conferences on the relationship between spiritual and social life organised by the Pavillon de France, yoga activities, chanting and sound meditation in the Matrimandir Amphitheatre, a chanting and bhajan performance at SAWCHU, and a week of events in Mother’s Flower Garden.

The three-day Pongal festivities began with a colourful celebration at Alankuppam on Monday, January 15, 2024. This was organised by the Mohanam Village Heritage Centre, who put on this festival every year to introduce the traditional practices of the Tamil population living in the villages surrounding Auroville to those unfamiliar with these customs.

On 16th-17th December, this festival brought together some of the best Tamil writers, educators, thinkers and philosophers, in the categories of poetry, literature, art, culture and the works of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

Between 2nd February – 22nd March a festival focussed on stewardship for water and biodiversity is taking place as a call to action in the bioregion.

The Auroville Youth Center’s (YC) annual gathering, themed this year as the ‘Find Yourself Festival’, took place on 16-18 December. The community was invited ‘to come together to celebrate in a safe, joyful, and playful space for the realization of human unity.’

Auroville Village Action Group held its annual International Women’s Day celebration on March 11th this year. Along with Aurovilians and invited guests and judges of various competitions, 350 representatives of the Udhayam Women’s Federation came for the event.

Special events are celebrated in all parts of the world. Have you ever been in a big city, like Paris or London, when they are celebrating something like Christmas or the New Year?

Sangamam in Tamil means ‘confluence’ or ‘a group of people coming together’ and this was very much the spirit of this year’s gathering on the 4th of March that brought together around 8000 people from Auroville, its beautiful bioregion, and many friends and guests from around the world.

From August 12 to 22, 2017, Bharat Nivas hosted Alpona, a festival of Bengal. The festival included an exhibition of paintings by ten women artists from Kolkata, an exhibition of textiles from Bengal, two musical evenings and screenings of Bengali films, including four by the internationally renowned director Buddhadeb Dasgupta who visited during the festival.

The All for Water for All (AFWFA) festival concluded recently on 22 March at Bharat Nivas, after seven weeks of knowledge sharing and learning.

The Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment oversees the interest of the Scheduled Castes, and intervenes in critical sectors through various schemes.

Auroville recently hosted a two-day festival to celebrate Tamil heritage and culture, a first of this scale and vision. The brainchild of Balu from Mohanam Cultural Centre, and Meenakshi from Auroville’s Tamil Heritage Centre and Ilaignarkal School, the festival brought together artisans, performers, farmers, VIPs and visitors for festivities on Auroville land.

The preliminary planning team for the 50th anniversary will soon be completing its work. What was their task? Their vision? And how have they organized the work?

A young boy stood at the table, his pencil hovering over his paper, his mind searching for what to write. He had spun a colourful wheel in the “Quality Game” at the Festival of Ideas held on Mother’s birthday, February 21, and had landed on the word, “Courage”.

On March 1st, 2015, the Auroville Festival in Chennai was launched at the ITC Grand Chola by the Governor of Tamil Nadu, His Excellency Dr. K.

In 2009, the World Bamboo Congress in Thailand declared the 18th of September to be World Bamboo Day (WBD). This day is intended to raise awareness of bamboo, one of the best renewable resources, as one possibility for meeting the growing needs of our global population.