Second edition of Ahmedabad Cultural Week to kick off on October 23

Mallika Sarabhai, Director, Darpana Academy of Performing Arts in Ahmedabad, says that her hometown has been at the forefront of contemporary thinking for the last 150 years, whether it be its built environment, textile tradition, or vibrant cultural institutions. “But over the last 25 years, a lot of these institutions went into silos for a variety of reasons,” says Mallika, whose Darpana Academy is one of the venue partners for the second edition of ACW.

It is these silos that the Ahmedabad Cultural Week (ACW), to be held in the city between October 23 and November 1, is trying to break down.

Shristi Sainani, the curatorial director for ACW — the first edition took place in 2025 — believes that although the city is home to many cultural institutions, they exist as separate voices within Ahmedabad, without broader resonance across the country. “We thought that if we did something as one city, the voice would reach more people and make a bigger impact,” she says.

In keeping with this core idea, the team behind ACW is attempting to collectively activate multiple cultural spaces in the city, 18 in all. These include the Archer Art Gallery, Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum, Kanoria Centre for Arts, and Iram Art Gallery, among others “Ahmedabad, for me, has been an active space where architecture, design, dance… all art forms, really, come together. In my mind, what the Ahmedabad Cultural Week is doing is bringing all those things together in the public space,” says Hema Rance Singh, Director, Arts India at the British Council, which will be presenting Where We Chose to Stand, a dance-theatre performance by choreographer and dancer Penny Chivas. The performance, which will be staged at one of these venues, the Sabarmati Riverfront, “blends music, stories and movement, connecting with the audience and thinking aloud together about climate issues and how that impacts our lives,” says Hema.

The ongoing climate crisis is, in fact, the central theme of this edition of the cultural week, which aims to highlight the shifting global temperatures, driven by human activities, and their long-term impact, as well as to set inquiry into the devious exploitation of land, deforestation, pollution, and contamination, “all while addressing concepts of sustainability, carbon neutrality, protecting biodiversity and conserving the environment for a better tomorrow,” as the event’s website states. According to Shristi, they chose the theme because climate conditions are changing worldwide. “Evident statistics are being churned out that the world is not what we knew it to be. Therefore, we thought that it made sense to talk about it collectively,” she says.

About 80 events largely focussed on this theme, including exhibitions, live performances, workshops, book readings and film screenings, will take place over the course of the 10-day festival, which has been supported by “a lot of people,” says Shristi. “We have got venue partners that helped us get moving as well as external sponsorship.”

Supporting the arts, after all, is extremely important, in the opinion of Harssh Shah, founder of the Ahmedabad-based Iram Art Gallery, which will be hosting an exhibition titled No Single Ground, curated by Satyajit Dave and featuring the work of modern masters such as Manu Parekh, Jamini Roy, Krishen Khanna, Satish Gujral, Laxma Goud and KG Subramanyan, among others. “I think that this is a call to society at large that we need more and more patronage. There is no dearth of wealth in our city and our state,” says Harssh, who hopes that a lot of people will patronise this event.

The second edition of the Ahmedabad Cultural Week (ACW) will be held in the city between October 23 and November 1. To know more, log into ahmedabadculturalweek.com