News
Read Time: 3 min

city scripts, an annual festival, to kick off on may 20 in bengaluru

UrbanVoices_DwijaModi
May 19, 2022
CityScripts_IIHS_Bengaluru

City Scripts, the annual urban writing festival, by Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), is back for its 7th edition and it’s offline this year 2022! The event will feature authors, journalists, poets, artists and academics who engage with the city in different ways. City Scripts is free and open to all.

The event has finally returned to its physical format and offers participants intriguing topics, conversations with authors, the launch of a new book, exhibitions regarding the environment, and even a pop-up bookstore. The event will be held from 20-22 May 2022 at the IIHS, Sadashivanagar. The three-day festival is packed with workshops, conversations, book launches, walks, art installations and photo exhibitions.

City Scripts was started in 2016 by IIHS as a platform to reflect on the contemporary moment, delve into the past as well as re-imagine the future of our cities. The Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) is a national education institution committed to the equitable, sustainable and efficient transformation of Indian settlements.

It is India’s first prospective independently funded and managed National University for Research and Innovation that focuses on its ongoing urban and development transformation.

As India urbanises, IIHS continues to explore and curate discussions on perspectives surrounding the urban — in short, how we understand and experience our cities, and how we read and write about them.  India’s urbanisation is the second largest rural to urban transition in human history.

By the middle of the century, at least 800 million Indians will live in cities and they will constitute more than half of India’s population. This is not just a demographic transition. Urbanisation is fundamentally changing India’s economy, society, culture, natural and built environments as well as politics. 

-IIHS

This edition will feature authors, journalists, poets, artists and academics who engage with the city in different ways.  The speakers include Dhanya Rajendran, Shrayana Bhattacharya, Lavanya Lakshminarayan, Yogesh Maitreya, Krupa Ge, Kumar Manish, Pooja Urgani, Rukmini S and Rohan Chakravarthy, all acclaimed in their fields, will be some of the feature speakers.

There will be discussions centred on topics such as Documenting Bahujan Voices: A Conversation with Publishers, Mental Health and the City, Fiction for the Future: Conversations on Climate Fiction, and Playful Cities: How Sports Shape City Culture with the aforementioned speakers. A book ‘Vital Signs’ by Amlanjyoti Goswami will also be launched simultaneously.

One of the authors in conversation sessions will feature ‘Bombay Imagined’ alongside Robert Stephens with Neha Sami. The Infinite Library by Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan will be among the varied art installations for this year’s edition of City Scripts.

City Scripts_IIHS
Image from the past event of CityScripts_IIHS

City Script 2021 featured participants from Colombia, Denmark, Germany, Indonesia, Peru, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and the US and the City Scripts 2019, the last physical edition before 2020 happened, had amazing participation that managed to stimulate interesting conversations and thoughts.

City Scripts is free and open to all. Register for the event at https://cityscripts.iihs.co.in/

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

20 + 18 =