Migration and Movement - Exploring Care and Solidarity through music, dance and discussion

Arko Mukherjee, an urban folk musician and Sandra Chatterjee, a dancer and an academician along with their friends have been running a community kitchen, a labour canteen in Howrah, one of the most marginalised areas in West Bengal, India. The initiative started in early 2020 during COVID Lockdown to feed underprivileged slum dwellers coming from the working-class families of the area, deeply affected by the lack of basic amenities for survival. The canteen volunteers and trustees have been successful in running the initiative for two years, finally buying the bit of land necessary and beginning to construct an independent new building comprising of a fully equipped kitchen space, a recording studio for local artists, a little performance studio and a workout space. The vision in a nutshell is to have an independent black box art house, the first of it's kind in Sub urban Bengal that will support the running of the kitchen, free from bureaucratic influences.

Aligning with the dialogue in development series at DPU and collaborating with Raktim Ray and Paroj Banerjee, Arko and Sandra attempts to explore Care and Solidarity in Migration and Movement with its underlying politics, through music, dance, and discussions. Its going to be an interesting and exciting take on dialogue in development, to listen to their shared experiences of working on ground and see how intersections of class, culture, art, music, care, communities and their shared resilience intertwine in reshaping the politics of today.

Since it’s a fundraising effort for a labour canteen in Bengal, this is a ticketed event. Each ticket costs £15. We would also appreciate additional voluntary donations besides the ticket fee according to your convenience. All the funds raised from this event goes straight into the official Priyonath Manna Bustee Community Kitchen fund.