Boost to rural tourism: 3-day Ripples Festival to be held from Dec 3

kolkata: Three-day Ripples Festival to promote cultural heritage and rural tourism will be held from December 3 to 5.

The festival is being organised by Banglanatak dot com and supported by British Council.

The festival will be held parallel on all three days at Dariyapur Dokra village (10am to 7pm), Bannabagram Baul ashram at 10am to 5pm and Tepantar theatre village from 6pm to 8.30pm. At the festival kanthas made by local weavers, wooden dolls will be displayed and sold.

The festival aims to contribute the long term resilience and sustainability of local folk artistes during the Covid pandemic. The festival opens up opportunities for dialogue , collaboration and co creation in theatre, heritage education and music between India and UK.

The entry to the festival venues is free but the visitors will have to carry proofs of double vaccination.

After coming to power in 2011, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee took personal interest to revive and organise the folk artistes across Bengal.

Many folk artistes who had given up their age old vocation had been brought back and were given opportunities to display their talent.

Musical instruments were given to them free of cost and over 2 lakh fold artistes were given monthly stipend. They were given programmes at the fairs organized by the state government.

The Patachitra painters have been given new lease of life after they were given opportunities to take past in fairs that had been organised all over the country.

However, because of the Covid pandemic the folk artistes had faced hardship as no fair had been organized in the past one and a half year.

The organizers believe that the festival will help to bring back the confidence of the artistes.