This year, Varta at Austin will focus on intergenerational storytelling with a special focus on South-Asian folk music. We will have artists present Shadow Puppets from Kerala - known as Tholpavakoothu for the first time in Austin. Award-winning children's writers, Jyoti Rajan Gopal, Reem Faruqi, Meera Sriram will be signing books and talking about them in our creative panel. Poet Neha Rayamajhi and illustrator/writer Natasha Badhiar will have a workshop style event on poetry and art.
We will present an interactive folk storytelling performance with student dancers, and also have a Bharatnatayam workshop with RootEd foundation. Local artist Akanksha Jain will lead a paper quilting workshop for kids. And UT professor, Dr. Dalpat Rajpurohit will talk about his latest book.
Kids will have access to snacks and FREE ice creams. We will also launch children's magazine, Bento's next issue themed, "The Invisible String" that talks about intergenerational storytelling. The second season of Zubaani podcast will also be made available at the event alongside a digital archive project for folk storytelling from South Asia.
This event is made possible with the Elevate Grant from the City of Austin's Economic Development Department.
