The Ocean Festival in Auroville passes the mic to fisherfolk
The Hindu
Auroville’s Tsunamika Project welcomes divers, researchers, fisherfolk and tourists to The Ocean Festival, a collaborative event that merges art and activism
Next week, deep sea divers, fisherfolk, researchers and like-minded people from different walks of life, will gather at Auroville to discuss and innovate on solutions for a cleaner ocean.
The Ocean Festival is a collaboration between Pondicherry Tourism and Auroville to help bring awareness to the plight of the ocean. The mascot of the festival is the little handmade doll named Tsunamika, whom organisers describe as a living symbol of hope, that has now taken the form of an Ocean Goddess.
Tsunamika was born of the result of man’s response to natural calamity. Following the 2004 Tsunami, Uma Prajapati, the founder of Upasana Design Studio, started the Tsunamika project while working with 600 fisherfolk to create dolls to provide trauma counselling.
Since then, for the past 17 years, Uma has been the director of the Tsunamika Project.
For the festival, she says, “We are keeping four core themes: art, activism, community and ocean. We have a lot of art and art installations using waste collected from the ocean.” She adds, “Involving the community to make the art ensure that it is not just one artist’s expression. It’s everybody touching the waste, which has been lying under the water for years, together.”
The festival will also feature divers and ocean experts, who will talk about what they see and how the sea has been changing before their eyes. We are also inviting PondyCAN [a people’s collective] who, in their 12 years of constant effort, finally brought a beach to Pondi.”
Other features of the festival include workshops on upcycling, knowing your waste and community activities like beach cleaning, turtle walks and more.
The High Court of Karnataka on Monday declined to interfere, at present, in the investigation against a Bharatiya Janata Party worker, who is among the accused persons facing charges of circulating obscene clips, related to “morphed” images and videos clips related to Prajwal Revanna, former Hassan MP, in public domain through pen drives and other modes.
The 16th edition of Bhoomi Habba was held on June 8, at the Visthar campus. The festival drew a vibrant crowd who came together to celebrate eco-consciousness through a variety of engaging activities, creative workshops, panel discussions, interactive exhibits and performances, all centered around this year’s theme: “Save Water, Save Lives.”