The first edition of Unboxing BLR Habba 2023 will start on 1 December, 2023. (Supplied)
Bengaluru is widely popular across India for being a tech hub and a start-up powerhouse. Needless to mention, the city’s weather, job opportunities and party culture attract a lot of people from all over. However, there is much more to the city than its tech hub status and pub culture. Its rich cultural offerings are often overlooked. The first edition of Unboxing BLR Habba — a one-of-a-kind city festival, aims to be a gateway to just that.
The 11-day-long city-wide festival is an initiative to curate, facilitate and catalyse activities that will enable the citizens and communities of Bengaluru to engage better with their city.
Modelled after global festivals like Edinburgh Festival, Unboxing BLR brings together events such as the Bangalore Literature Fest, Bangalore Tech Summit, Kala Koota, Thindi Puram, Handmade crafts mela, Ranga Katte, Bangalore Design Week, among others.
With a diverse range of cultural events planned across the city, there will be something for everyone. (Supplied)
“Unboxing BLR Habba is a giant tent, an umbrella under which there are over 55 partners. Each of the partners are individually good at what they do. Nearly 500 events across the city have been planned throughout the 11 days of the fest, including film screenings, heritage walks, food fests and more,” shares Ravichandar V, the festival director.
With a diverse range of cultural events planned across the city, there will be something for everyone.
“We have events spread across over 70 locations. Theatre, music, films, heritage works, literature, design, food and such. As a result, there will be something for everyone. And because it’s spread across so many locations, there will be events happening close to everyone’s house as well. So people won’t have to commute a lot to take part,” he adds.
The festival is conceptualised by Unboxing BLR, a platform that catalyses activities and forums that aim to preserve and celebrate Bengaluru’s rich heritage and further reiterate the city’s growing stature on the global map.
Ravichandar tells South First, “When Prashanth Prakash and Malini Goyal (co-founders of Unboxing BLR) wrote the book Unboxing BLR- The City of New Beginnings, they also came up with the idea of creating a festival of festivals. And once we had that idea, we didn’t want to wait.”
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The festival was put together in just six weeks, he says.
“The idea of this festival was born in the first week of October. In six weeks, we have a full-fledged festival. That’s the speed at which we have worked towards this.”
For that, they brought together individual experts to curate events in each vertical. Think of it as 55 Michelin Star chefs cooking their specials for you, he draws a parallel.
“We asked these experts to go ahead and do their events and offered to take care of the publicity, creating awareness, getting required government permissions, locations and such.”
The larger aim of Unboxing BLR Habba is to make Bengaluru the go-to destination for arts and culture during the first fortnight of December.
Ravichandar explains, “We want people, not just in India but also of countries like Malaysia, Singapore and the like to say that Bengaluru is the happening place for art and culture and that’s where they want to be.”
An amalgamation of technology, literature, design and more, Unboxing BLR Habba is all set to showcase Bengaluru’s vibrant culture in front of the world.
Unboxing BLR Habba will take place from 1 December to 11 December. More details online.
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