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What does culture and creative expression mean to me?
- punjabculturalproj
- Jul 22, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Aug 17, 2024
I’m an ideas person - being ‘creative’ has always been second nature to me. But as I went through life and learned at the school of hard knocks, it dawned on me just how hard it is, despite my relatively privileged background, to actually execute any creative dreams without committing to at least a moderate degree of stone walling, compromising, and potential starvation. And this was in big cities such as Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai.
When I moved to Punjab almost 15 years ago, I entered a small-town world of stifling yet unwritten cultural norms that discouraged new forms of creative expression, under the garb of upholding old ‘traditions’.
The discouragement was not so much vocal as it was logistical. There simply were no spaces outside the religious or overly traditional to express or experience anything beyond mundane, tired rehashes of the same old same old.
Hardly any auditoriums, festivals, or events that enabled a more inclusive, diverse or experimentative notion of culture or creativity. I quickly realized that wannabe artists in Punjab must apparently move overseas (Canada!) or to larger cities in more progressive states to express themselves creatively! The few who do make it here are typically musicians associated with the film industry. Hardly what I would call diverse and inclusive!
So here we are. Reman and I, two souls seeking the same thing: more safe spaces to express ourselves creatively and more opportunities to engage with diverse, experimentative, new age creative experiences.
With The Punjab Cultural Project we intend to push some metaphorical boundaries within our homestate (adopted, for me) of Punjab.
Our uber-ambitious attempt aims to create:
More spaces to express ourselves creatively as artists
More opportunities to engage with diverse, experimentative, new age creative experiences as citizens
Pretty simple but not easy.
Will you join us on this journey? Sign up here and we’ll keep you posted as we build this fantastic vision from an idea into something real: events, residencies, festivals, exhibitions, debates and discussions are in the works.
Let’s walk the talk. Together.
