Bengaluru: The India Foundation of the Arts (IFA) is set to celebrate seven years of its Project 560 with a citywide festival that highlights Bengaluru’s rich artistic and cultural identity. The festival, supported by BNP Paribas India, will run over two weekends and feature 36 curated projects across the city, organisers said.

Project 560: Engaging Bengaluru through art

Project 560, named after the first three digits of Bengaluru’s PIN code, was launched in 2018 to foster deeper connections between residents and the city. IFA’s executive director, Menaka Rodriguez, said, “As residents of a city, we often wonder about our relationship with the place we live and work. We need to create spaces and opportunities to stop, pause, connect and engage with each other, the people who make up our neighbourhood and the city.”

Since its inception, the initiative has supported close to 50 projects, bringing together artists, scholars, and residents to engage with neighbourhoods, cultural spaces, and Bengaluru’s natural ecosystems. These projects broadly fall into three categories: Neighbourhood Engagements, Arts Projects (Research/Practice), and Curated Artistic Engagements. Collectively, they aim to create “diverse artistic and cultural interventions, enabling residents to re-imagine their city while creating lasting connections and critical conversations around its evolving identity,” IFA said in a press note.

Festival highlights and activities

The Project 560 Festival will showcase the cumulative work of these initiatives through walks, workshops, dramatised readings, poetry performances, talks, games, and exhibitions. Many of the projects were conducted at different times, and the festival will present them collectively, allowing the city to experience their collective impact.

Some of the highlights include:

  • A guided walk through Majestic by Chandra Keerthi B
  • A talk about a women’s football team by Isha Harsha Mangalmurti & PASS FC
  • A multi-lingual poetry workshop by Mamta Sagar
  • A project by Anmol Tikoo exploring caregivers’ experiences, mental health, and its depiction in Kannada cinema
  • Stories about the farmers’ market at Byatarayanapura by Ganapathy BP

“Putting projects together in a festival is a way of celebrating the journey we have had over the last seven years,” Menaka said. She added that IFA is “thankful to be an organisation that calls Bengaluru home and excited to have supported and continue to support projects in the city that engage with it in different ways.”

Reimagining the city through culture

Project 560 Festival aims to provide residents and visitors alike with opportunities to reflect on Bengaluru’s evolving identity. By connecting art, culture, and community engagement, the festival seeks to foster dialogue and encourage people to rethink their relationship with the city they inhabit.