News from NICO | Nitte Creativity Fest

The Nitte Creativity Fest, a day-long event of inspiring talks, performances and interactive sessions was organised by the students of Final year MA, on 2nd July 2022, as part of their studies in Event Management. The event had a total of four Speakers, three performers and also saw a display of paintings by two artistes. 

The session opened with a talk by Dr Chandan Gowda, Author, Academic and Translator who spoke at length about folk art and creativity, an area that has not been much explored. A Professor with School of Development, Azim Premji University, Bangalore he has translated writings from Kannada into English including ‘Bara’, a novella by UR Ananthamurthy and edited ‘The Post Office of Abachooru’, a book of short stories of KP Purnachandra Tejasvi.

This was followed by a talk and interactive session with Baadal Nanjundaswamy, Visual Artist and Creative Director who spoke of his experiments using art and creativity to draw attention to civic issues. An alumnus of CAVA, Mysore, Street Art, 3D Art and Installation Art highlighting issues like poor roads, open manholes and other everyday irritants, are his forte. Most of these have gone viral on social media, resulting in immediate action from civic authorities. He spoke of using art for a purpose and the feedback, both positive and negative that his creations have received.

The third Speaker of the day was Akarsha Kamala, Digital Content Creator and the man behind MetroSaga, a popular lifestyle and entertainment channel.  He shared his journey from being an Engineer in the US, to following his passion and being part of the talented team behind MetroSaga. Incidentally, one of the co-founders of MetroSaga, Srinag H is a Nitte alumni, having studied Management at Justice K S Hegde Institute of Management.

Encouraging students to observe the little things around them a bit more, he said interesting and comical content could be found all around, especially in Indian family gatherings. He also impressed upon the audience that to have a popular channel growing organically, one only needs to focus on offering good, clean content. Everything else will just fall in place. 

The last Speaker for the day was author Shashi Warrier, born in Kerala and settled in Mangalore. He has several thrillers and novels to his credit, apart from being co-writer of the Indian English film Bokshu, the Myth. An MSc (Hons) in Economics and an avid biker, he spoke at length of his love for the written word and the world of books. 

The Fest also saw performances by Abhinav Grover, an engineering student and a theatre artiste who learnt Yakshagana while pursuing his studies in Manipal. A scene from the Mahabharata, that was more soliloquy where Karna voices his thoughts and sorrow was beautifully enacted by him.

The artiste who performed next was Trisha Shetty a trained Bharatanatyam dancer who performed the Kadamba Kaushike. Through graceful movements she narrated the story of Chanda and Munda asuras and their conquest by Goddess Durga.

The last performance for the day was by the Rap Band interestingly called, Department of Culture. A home-grown band, they brought to the fest a local flavour with the rappers being largely from in and around Mangalore.

Alumni of Mahalasa College of Visual Art, Mangalore, artistes Santhosh Andrade and Kamil Raza generously shared a collection of their paintings for the audience to view and enjoy. The paintings were displayed in the quadrangle of the Institute all through the day.