EASTgoesSOUTH

Client

OFF Track Collective, Mesh Works, UK

Project Date

April 2025

Brief Overview

A creative adventure bringing Indian, African and European artists together to explore the power of transdisciplinary collaborations, defying geographical boundaries and building inclusive networks.

Have you ever been on a train journey and found yourself immersed in a deep conversation with a stranger?

EASTgoesSOUTH brought together 6 artists, 4 producer-curators and 4 witnesses from three continents together for a week-long journey of creative rebirth. From Kochi to Kolkata, with stops in Bangalore and Delhi we were imagining and making together on India’s railways.

EASTgoesSOUTH is inspired by EAST – a creative adventure that started on East Africa’s historic railway in 2016 and looked to build connection and collaboration between artists working in different disciplines and from different areas of the world. Our experience is that the trust built through the journey and methodologies that facilitate deep peer-to-peer learning, leads to collaborative relationships, cutting-edge practice and finding new ways of navigating and reshaping artistic realities beyond the project.

EASTgoesSOUTH 2025 is directed by renowned Indian Dancer and Choreographer Diya Naidu. Naidu first joined EAST 2019 in Tanzania and reflected on how unusual it was to have the opportunity to build connections and collaborate with artists from the global majority – together – centering conversations/methodologies that are important to them, and sharing these with UK/EU peers.

This pilot project has been made possible with support from the Miller-Zillmer foundation, a passionate team, partners and artists investing in the vision!

Our theme this time is – Kovu Safarini (which in Swahili means, the scars acquired along the way)

We are invited to think about the journey (any journey) and the marks it has left upon the skin we wear. The physical skin, the armour, the invisible skins and the many identities one has gathered.

We are seldom thrown together with a group of strangers in this way -contemplating how to meet creatively, while being rocked and hummed into sleep and wake. This journey was more about questions and fantasies that happen to land in some physical form, almost by accident. Or shall we say by some kind of radical allowing and saying yes to the kind of collaborations we did as children, led by curiosity and not the anxiety of deadlines. May this be more about discovery and less about a product to be showcased. Birthing art as humans who happen to be artists and not the other way around. Just this once. Because we can, and because perhaps we need to.

Cohort of artists of the inaugural edition of EASTgoesSOUTH :

Arya Rothe, Film-maker
Pune, India

Deen Atger, Multidisciplinary artist, new media
(b. France), London, UK

Katlego K Kolanyane-Kesupile, cultural architect, author, performer, researcher and TED Fellow
Botswana, Africa

oysh, anti-disciplinary writer, performer, media-maker.
Goa, India

Snigdha Prabhakar, dancer, choreographer, teacher
Bangalore, India

Sourjyo Sinha, musician, producer and event curator
Kolkata, India

Our witnesses:

Ninad Samaddar, Founder and Artistic director of The Urban Theatre Project, Calcutta and a member of the board of trustees to Flute Theatre, UK.

Shubham Roy Choudhury is an arts manager-producer, film curator, researcher and festival organiser.

Thommen Ollapally is the Founder of Shoonya – Centre for Art and Somatic Practices, one of the first multi-art spaces of its kind in Bangalore

Sameera Iyengar is a creative producer and theatre professional, Co-Founder Junoon, Founder Freestyle:arts in action

The curatorial, administrative and production team:

Poppy Spowage is co-founder and creative producer of EAST – East African Soul Train, Director of Mesh Works.

Geraldine Hepp is co-founder and creative director at EAST – East African Soul Train,

Diya Naidu is an independent choreographer and performer. Founder-director of Citizens of Stage Co Lab

Paramita Saha is a performer, curator, and arts manager, based in Kolkata. Co-Founder-Director of Artsforward.

Adrijaa Mridul Majumder is an arts administrator, event organiser, artist manager and enthusiast of arts and culture.