2,500 folk artistes to perform at Biswa Bangla Lok Sanskriti Utsav, Poush Utsav

The city is going to witness four mega events in the next 15 days with around 2,500 folk artistes scheduled to perform in Biswa Bangla Lok Sanskriti Utsav and Poush Utsav. This comes at the time when film lovers will be enjoying movies in the 6th Kolkata International Children’s festival.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be inaugurating Biswa Bangla Lok Sanskriti Utsav on December 23 at Rabindra Sadan premises.

Biswa Bangla Lok Sanskriti Utsav will continue till January 1. According to an official of the Information and Cultural Affairs department, around 1,500 folk artistes will be performing only in the inaugural function. In the remaining days another 800 artistes will be performing.

This year, Biswa Bangla Lok Sanskriti Utsav will be taking place at the Madhusudan Mancha Premises at Dhakuria. The official said that there will be performances of different folk art forms including Chhau, Rabha, Raibeshi, Baul and tribal dance. There will performance on folk art forms from hills including Lepcha and Maruni dance.

It may be mentioned that it was the Chief Minister’s dream project to help the folk artistes and the state government had brought 80,000 folk artistes under the Loko Proashar scheme. Each of the artistes will be getting Rs 1,000 per month and will also get Rs 1,000 for every performance.  

The much hyped Poush Utsav is going to start from December 24 and it will continue till January 1. It will be held at Hedua and Mohur Kunja. In the utsav, both folk artistes and artistes from the city will be performing. At the same time there will be stalls from where Bengali cuisine especially the traditional sweels of the state that include pithe and puli will be available.  

Kolkata International Children’s Film Festival, which will be inaugurated on December 24, will continue for the next eight days.

The programme will be inaugurated by child artist Priyangshu Bandyopadhyay. Amit Mitra, the state finance minister, Sashi Panja, the state social welfare minister, MP Arpita Ghosh, president of the Shishu Kishore Academy, film directors Sandip Ray and Goutam Ghosh will also be present in the programme.  

On January 4, the Tele Samman Award function in which actors will be felicitated is scheduled to be held in Nazrul Mancha.

The New Town Mela is scheduled to be organised by New Town Kolkata Development Authority from December 23 and January 1 at Mela Ground situated opposite Rabindra Tirtha in Rajarhat.