Project Title: The Making of Arts, Culture and Place at the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa and Birmingham
Project Code: SAF PhD – 40694535
Project Description:
This PhD project is an opportunity to work in partnership with the organisers of and artist contributors to the Serendipty Arts Festival (SAF) in Goa and Birmingham. You will be able to shape your own PhD thesis while seeking to understand and address the following research questions:
- In what ways does the SAF contribute to socio-cultural and economic notions of arts, culture, placemaking and belonging in the Goa and Birmingham regions?
- Focussing on interdisciplinary approaches (dance, visual arts, craft, photography, culinary arts, film, and performance), how does the SAF address issues of arts education, cultural patronage, and access to the arts through strategies of equality, diversity and inclusion?
- Through its programming, in what ways is the SAF able to intervene in local and global cultural debates in and beyond India, and what are some of the challenges and possibilities of this?
The PhD proposal can be approached from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives, including media and cultural studies, cultural geography, business and development studies, arts education, digital media and performance studies; festival studies, leisure and tourism studies.
Anticipated Findings:
- A better understanding of the Serendipity Arts Festival as part of the arts and culture landscape of India and more globally, focussing on the activities of the Serendipity Arts Foundation and the Serendipity Arts Festival Programming in Goa and Birmingham.
- An up-to-date review of current academic work around socio-cultural and economic notions of arts, culture and place making, using the Serendipity Arts Festival as a primary case study.
- A better understanding of how multidisciplinary arts festivals such as the Serendipity Arts Festival create networks of opportunity for its organisers, contributors and audiences to engage with pressing contemporary issues of local and global importance.
Contact (and Director of Studies for this project):
Prof Rajinder Dudrah – Rajinder.Dudrah@bcu.ac.uk
Application Link: https://www.bcu.ac.uk/courses/media-and-cultural-studies-phd-2024-25