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Ahmedabad Cultural Week 2025

by Nato Thompson

Ahmedabad is a city built upon layers of resonance. To walk its streets is to feel the pull of time, the vibration of craft, and the civic spirit of generations who have carved meaning into stone, fabric, ritual, and social life. From the Adalaj Stepwell to the Calico Museum of Textiles, from the handloom to the Jama Masjid, the city’s cultural architecture does not only represent the past — it insists on the present. Culture here is not ornamental, but civic. It is an infrastructure of belonging.

The upcoming Ahmedabad Cultural Week 2025 (ACW Ed.1) takes that spirit forward in a contemporary register. For the first time, a wide network of institutions — from venerable museums to grassroots spaces — will sync their programming in a city-wide celebration. Together, venues such as 079 | STORIES, Archer Art Gallery, Arthshila, Basera, Conflictorium, Darpana Academy of Performing Arts, Hutheesing Visual Arts Centre, Iram Art, Kanoria Centre for Arts, Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum, Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum, Mehnat Manzil, Samara Art Gallery, Shreyas Foundation, and Vastu Shilpa Foundation form not just a list of venues but an infrastructure of resonance — a fabric of institutions whose simultaneous activation amplifies the presence of art in civic life.

show the world how art produces the civic. Cultural Week 2025 is more than an event. It is a prototype of a city in resonance with itself — a living infrastructure of art, history, and civic imagination.

Infrastructures of Resonance

The Civic Power of Art

Art produces the civic. When a community gathers to watch a performance at the Darpana Academy or debate social histories at the Conflictorium, it is not simply consuming culture — it is practicing civic life. Art demands presence, attention, and negotiation. It creates publics. And publics are the foundation of civic society.

But the production of art is also the production of new forms of belonging and sharing. Neuroscience reminds us that our brains remain plastic well into adulthood. Every act of creation, every rhythm learned, every rehearsal repeated, rewires pathways in the brain. Art is not only cognitive exercise; it is life-affirming. It expands our capacity to connect, to imagine, to belong.

This is why art cannot be reduced to economic utility, even though cities often lean on creative industries for development metrics. Its deeper value lies in generating resonance that reshapes how we live with one another. An exhibition, a performance, a mural — each is a small laboratory for belonging.

The Indian-born, New York-based artist Rina Banerjee captures this beautifully: “I dream of this willingness to close the gaps between cultures, communities, and places. I think of identity as inherently foreign; of heritage as something that leaks away from the concept of home — as happens when one first migrates.” Art, in this sense, doesn’t just represent belonging; it produces it.

The Tapestry of Institutions

Each participating institution brings a vital thread. Kanoria Centre for Arts provides continuity between generations of artists. The Conflictorium, with its radical commitment to dialogue, brings urgency and conscience. The Lalbhai Dalpatbhai Museum grounds the week in histories of Jain art, while the Kasturbhai Lalbhai Museum opens to modern and contemporary practices. Darpana Academy, founded by Mrinalini and Mallika Sarabhai, continues to show how performance can intervene in civic life with grace and clarity.

Equally important are newer players — 079 | STORIES, Samara Art Gallery, and Arthshila — demonstrating how private initiatives can create public resonance. These do not replace older institutions but add vitality, reminding us that infrastructures of resonance are living ecosystems.

As Raqs Media Collective has written, “Our reason for staying with art … is to use the visual to go beyond the retinal, to deploy language in ways that exceed mere seeing.” In this light, each contribution to Cultural Week is not just visual display but civic experiment.

A Civic Horizon

One of the most powerful aspects of Ahmedabad Cultural Week is its horizon. It is not only about a week in 2025. It is about setting a precedent: that Ahmedabad can stage a recurring civic festival of art and ideas. Just as biennales or art fairs transform the visibility of cities globally, a cultural week rooted in local institutions but open to international resonance positions Ahmedabad uniquely — not as a marketplace, but as a civic commons of culture.

In a time when attention is fragmented and civic life is under strain, the ability of art to convene people across difference is not incidental. It is urgent. By aligning institutions and amplifying resonance, Ahmedabad can model how cities might respond to our moment: not with infrastructure of steel and concrete, but with infrastructures of care, creativity, and meaning.

Ahmedabad, with its extraordinary history and vibrant present, is uniquely positioned to show the world how art produces the civic. Cultural Week 2025 is more than an event. It is a prototype of a city in resonance with itself — a living infrastructure of art, history, and civic imagination.