Namaste London: Serendipity Arts Announces Multi-Disciplinary Festival in the UK Capital With An All-Women Curatorial Team

Over the past decade, the Serendipity Arts Festival has become an annual fixture in India’s art and culture calendar—unfolding in a sprawling multidisciplinary festival every December in Goa. This year’s edition is weeks away (scheduled to run from December 13-20), but Serendipity Arts—the not-for-profit cultural organisation behind the festival—is broadening its horizons.

Serendipity Arts has announced the launch of a London festival from June 19 to 27 next year. Announced in partnership with the Great Exhibition Road Festival led by Imperial College London, the festival will be hosted across Exhibition Road and the South Kensington Culture Quarter. Artists and creatives from India and the diaspora—both established and emerging—will take the spotlight with a larger goal to foster cultural exchange. “South Asian creativity cannot be understood through a single discipline, tradition or geography. It lives as much in food, sound, and movement as it does in a gallery,” Shefali Munjal, Co-Founder & Patron of Serendipity Arts and Serendipity Arts Festival, said in a press statement announcing the launch. “Our curators, working across generations and disciplines, will bring that richness into museums and public spaces across Exhibition Road, with London's South Asian communities at the heart of the programme.”

Munjal’s mention of the curators deserves special attention—the debut edition of the London festival will be led by an all-women curatorial team. The programming will be multidisciplinary with Veeranganakumari Solanki and Nancy Adajania curating the New Media segment. Latika Gupta is set to helm the visual arts curation while Elizabeth Yorker will spearhead the direction for culinary arts. The curator for music is Sneha Khanwalkar who has already made a first impression with Serendipity in London; earlier this year, the music director partnered artist Sudarshan Shetty to showcase Eyes Shall Deceive, a film and live music commission as part of an event in London to mark 175 years of the Great Exhibition of 1851.

The 2027 festival will unfold in collaboration with several institutions in the UK including the Science Museum, V&A South Kensington, Natural History Museum, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Geographical Society, Royal College of Music, Royal College of Art and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851. According to Kristian Volsing, senior curator, contemporary programme, V&A South Kensington, the partnership align with the institution’s Friday Late series and their shared values. “It’s an incredibly timely collaboration, setting the stage for the museum’s upcoming focus on the region, with V&A East Museum’s Spring 2027 exhibition South Asia Now: Fashion. Art. Design. and [the] Spring 2028 re-opening of the South Asia Gallery at South Kensington,” Volsing added in a statement. Matthew Todd, Director of Programming at the Royal Albert Hall, has said that the festival will be a further boost to the institution’s South Asian-focused programming while Dr. Alex Burch, Director of Public Programmes at the Natural History Museum emphasised on collaborating on projects related to the planetary emergence and “the future of our planet.”

Ahead of next year’s edition, some of the London partners are set to participate in the Goa edition this December. On the cards are the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition from the Natural History Museum, a showcase of work from the Serendipity Arts Foundation and Royal College of Art artist residency, and another showcase developed with the Royal Geographical Society and British Film Institute. Professor Joe Smith, Director of the Royal Geographical Society, has further highlighted that the institution will work with Serendipity to develop a collection from the institution’s collection of objects related to the Indian subcontinent. “Applying creative methods and cross-cultural perspectives to these items will uncover different stories and learnings, deepening the connection between past and present and helping us see the world differently,” he added. “We hope visitors to the exhibition find the experience enriching and leave considering how they can learn from times, places and cultures that may be different from their own.”