States » EastPosted at: Nov 6 2026 10:01PM


Kolkata's stories of protest, creativity and people's struggles to take centre stage at 10-day festival

Kolkata, Nov 6 (UNI) From the rebellious poetry of the Hungryalists and the political cinema of Mrinal Sen to Badal Sircar's street theatre and the history of football in Bengal, a 10-day festival will revisit the many ways in which art and culture have reflected the city's social and political struggles.
Bringing these lesser-explored stories to the fore, Delhi Art Gallery (DAG) will organise the sixth edition of its annual festival, The City as a Museum, from November 13 to 22.
Focusing on the period between the 1940s and the 1990s, the edition will examine how artists and cultural practitioners responded to political unrest, economic hardship, social inequalities and struggles for people's rights.
Unlike its previous edition, which explored Kolkata through its iconic buildings and landmarks, the upcoming festival will look at the people who have shaped the city and their claim to its public spaces.
This time, the focus will be on the people rather than the city's celebrated architecture. Inspired by French philosopher Henri Lefebvre's concept of the 'right to the city', the festival will examine how residents have used public spaces to express their views, challenge established practices and participate in shaping the city.
From November 13 to 22, 2026, The City as a Museum festival will travel across the city—from a museum in a colonial-period prison, a football club, a newspaper archive to university campuses, aristocratic homes and public plazas—ten public programmes will revisit the history of the city from the mid to late twentieth century, tracing artistic and performative practices that have highlighted quotidian struggles and championed the rights of ordinary people.
Open City, an exhibition of paintings, drawings and archival material from the 1940s to the 1990s, will be on view at the Alipore Museum from November 13 to 22. Across five registers of artistic approaches—Poetics, Satire, Protest, Contraventions and Metaphor—it highlights practices that centred the ordinary person's right to the city, and charts how a city in strife became the ground for an art of resistance, collectivism and hope.
The House that Remembers, a site-specific participatory theatre performance at Sovabazar Nat Mandir on November 15 and 16, has been specially developed for the festival by The Urban Theatre Project and explores how the translation of a play became the cause for a state crackdown in the 19th century and inspired solidarities and resistance across nationalities and languages.
We the People, a public installation developed by artist and pedagogue Sanchayan Ghosh at the Plaza, Dakshinapan Shopping Complex, for the festival, takes inspiration from Nandalal Bose's engagement with the Haripura Congress and approaches public art as a means of collectively imagining the nation and its people. The installation will host several events throughout November 20 to 22.
The edition features experimental and interactive formats such as poetry readings in a Cabin hotel on College Street, an unplugged tribute to the experiments of Moheener Ghoraguli, a conversation with a captain of the 1981 Women's World Cup, and a lettering artist writing a wall live accompanied by songs of resistance.
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Tags: #Kolkata's stories of protest# creativity and people's struggles to take centre stage at 10-day festival
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