Royal Enfield Social Mission Brings a Multidisciplinary Festival
Royal Enfield Social Mission has announced the inaugural edition of its multidisciplinary festival, ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas.’ It will take place from December 5th to 15th, 2024, at Travancore Palace, New Delhi. This festival showcases the power of collective action for change in Royal Enfield’s spiritual home, the Himalayas.
What does ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas’ Entail?
In ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas,’ Royal Enfield Social Mission will feature Interactive Installations and Exhibitions. Some of them include the following.
1. From Folk to Fabric: The Himalayan Knot Textile Exhibition
The Himalayan Knot is a textile conservation project bringing together Himalayan artisan communities, conservation specialists, craftspeople, and designers to conserve pastoral lands and spotlight craft practices. Curated by Ikshit Pande alongside contributors including Monisha Ahmed, Aratrik Devvarman, Easternlight Zimik, Kevisedenuo Margaret Zinyu, Charlee Mathlena and more, From Folk to Fabric is a tribute to the storytelling of this region, where traditional textiles and craftsmanship echo the spirit of oral tradition and folklore. It traces the rich craftsmanship across the Himalayan states and UT Ladakh, highlighting sustainable textiles and regional crafts through folklore, attire, photographs and artefacts.
2. An Ode to the Snow Leopard
In ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas,’ filmmakers Gautam Pandey and Doel Trivedy will create a first-of-its-kind 360-degree VR film experience, which showcases remote habitats of highly elusive snow leopards, in high-altitude landscapes. Royal Enfield Social Mission is extending its conservation efforts to Keystone Species in the Himalayas, with a long-term vision of helping build human-animal harmony in the region.
3. Green Pit Stops: Harmony by Design
Curator and artist Vishal Dar will showcase ‘Harmony by Design,’ an exhibition of drawings and scale models of Royal Enfield Social Mission’s Green Pit Stops, a project invested in circular economies at the intersections of traditional building techniques, community partnerships and local ecologies.
4. Helmets for India, Art for Change
Helmets for India is an artists’ collective promoting road safety and changing mindsets towards safe riding practices. In partnership with the India Foundation for the Arts, this exhibit features works of 12 artists using helmets as a unique and unconventional canvas to express their individuality, emotions, experiences and perspectives. Some of the artists associated with the project include Debangshu Moulik, Aravani Art Project, Aditi Mali, Indu Harikumar, Nirupa Rao, and Indu Antony.
5. Helmeted Hyphae
Designed and executed by ST+ART, Helmeted Hyphae is a strikingly unique, six-foot-high structure that resembles a motorcycle helmet, constructed from mycelium—a revolutionary, organic material grown through a delicate process that transforms raw, biological matter into a lightweight yet durable form. Through its scale and material, this installation aims to evoke both curiosity and respect about how natural materials can take on bold, structural forms.
6. Evolution of Ice Hockey in Ladakh, Then & Now
Curated by Ladakh Arts & Media Organisation, this exhibition documents the sport’s history in the region, featuring players and key opinion leaders, and celebrates both the sport and its legacy in Ladakh. Royal Enfield Social Mission supports training and facilitates Ice Hockey and winter sports at a grassroots level in the Indian Himalayan region. The programme aims to create an eco-system for developing winter sports in the region and also support the National Ice Hockey teams to compete internationally, with the vision of enabling their participation at the 2042 Winter Olympics.
7. The Shape of the Wind is a Tree
This ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas,’ exhibition will showcase works by the recipients of The Himalayan Fellowship for Creative Practitioners. It gathers the projects and processes supported by the inaugural edition of The Himalayan Fellowship for Creative Practitioners (2023 – 24), reflecting on elemental connections, sites of remembering, and paths of return. This fellowship is part of the Royal Enfield Himalayan Hub, a collective learning centre for climate resilience.
These works engage with ideas of self, sensory ecologies, and enduring stories rooted in varied landscapes. Taking from American poet and environmentalist Wendell Berry’s ecopoetic oeuvre—and most specifically, his poem ‘Elegy’, the exhibition embodies and represents relationships between inner and outer worlds where “the shape of the wind” is held and remembered by the form of a tree, a symbol of rootedness intertwined with movement. Each creative intervention in the space reflects a practice of reciprocity: quiet acts of regeneration, places of rest, and maps that trace where songs and stories flow. Through varied mediums, the exhibition invites reflection on the enduring energies that sustain and connect us.
8. Through the Lens of Community, Conservation and Culture
The Green Hub Project has curated as an immersive, experiential multimedia space, ‘Through the Lens of Community, Conservation and Culture,’ which imagines a living forest ecosystem as a symbol of the connections built over years of work with communities and youth in the Himalayas towards conservation and collective action. Films, photos and soundscapes will bring these stories of action from the Himalayas to life. This fellowship is part of the Royal Enfield Himalayan Hub, a collective learning centre for climate resilience.
9. Entanglements
A site-specific installation in partnership with sā Ladakh, that reflects on the connection between two distinct landscapes—the Aravalli range and the Himalayas—through regenerative art. Formed at different times in Earth’s history, these mountain ranges are entangled by tectonic forces. The installation engages future custodians—students from Mira Model School in Delhi—who contribute visual narratives on what they want to leave behind for future generations.
10. Workshops and Discussions at the ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas’
Royal Enfield Social Mission is also deviising panel discussions on topics such as safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, responsible tourism, and climate resilience; while also exploring themes of human-animal harmony, culinary heritage, climate literacy, systems thinking for sustainable solutions, etc. The festival will additionally feature engaging sessions on modern storytelling techniques and include poetry and oral traditions. Prominent speakers from conservation, crafts, culinary and contemporary art, filmmakers and authors will join representatives from the Himalayan communities, especially youth changemakers, in discussions that platform stories from the Himalayas to make complex issues such as climate change accessible to the general public. The festival includes curated food experiences and hands-on workshops on Himalayan crafts and circularity.
11. Royal Enfield Social Mission’s Festival Shops
Curated festival shops will offer unique Himalayan products, including decor, produce, books, and handicrafts. A special apparel pop-up, The Himalayan Knot, will feature collaborations such as Royal Enfield x EKA x Looms of Ladakh, Royal Enfield x Countrymade x The Action Northeast Trust, and Royal Enfield x Sonam Dubal x The Action Northeast Trust, along with collections by Ladakh-based Namza Couture, Ura Maku from Assam, Jejum Gadi from Arunachal Pradesh, SWGT from Uttarakhand, and more, showcasing clothing and accessories that honour Himalayan heritage.
12. Performances at ‘Journeying Across the Himalayas’
Throughout the Royal Enfield Social Mission festival, attendees can enjoy cultural performances that bring the Himalayas’ rich traditions to life, with musical acts by Taba Chake, Bipul Chhetri, Lou Majaw, Ao Naga Choir, Parvaaz, and Joi Barua among others.
About Royal Enfield Social Mission
Royal Enfield Social Mission empowers over 100 Himalayan communities to become resilient to climate change. The endeavour is also to encourage riders to ‘Leave every place better’ and catalyse a movement of one million riders to explore sustainably, regenerating the landscapes they ride through. It currently supports more than 50 projects across the Indian Himalayan region.
Whether it is promoting rural sports and winter tourism through the ‘Ice Hockey League’, building a network of ‘Green Pitstops’ for travellers, conserving textile heritage by bringing together pastoral communities, artisans and designers through ‘The Himalayan Knot’, supporting filmmakers and creative practitioners with fellowships, or instituting a collective learning centre called ‘The Himalayan Hub’, the initiatives are wired to create learning and livelihood opportunities for local communities.
Image Courtesy – Royal Enfield Social Mission
Contributor
