The Bombay Picture Palace
Client: The WOMAD Foundation (World of Music, Arts and Dance)
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The WOMAD Foundation showcases music, arts and dance from around the world at commercial festivals globally. Charity Shop DJ was commissioned by the Foundation to create a venue for its UK Rivermead festival, to combine an exhibition of Indian cinema art with performance and party spaces.
Bombay Picture Palace at Womad UK
Bombay Picture Palace at Womad UK
The result was the Bombay Picture Palace, an immersive venue which combined art with performance with commercial tea bar.
The daytime focus was the live painting of a largescale ‘Bollywood’ advertising hoarding by a former street artist, now resident in London after migrating from India to the UK in 1968. By night the space became a party venue featuring DJs.
The popularity of the venue led to a further commission for the WOMADelaide Festival in South Australia in 2009. The ambition of the venue was scaled up to create a showcase for the multi-artforms which make up Indian cinema, and featured a live demonstration by the last remaining studios of film advertising painters in Mumbai.
The tour was part-sponsored by the Government of South Australia.
Our Brief
Our Brief
To provide a space to showcase Indian cinema art and artists, which could also function as a venue in a commercial music festival environment
To provide lively performance space and multi-media ‘chat’ sessions
To liaise with artists through project development, preparation and delivery
Our Process
Our Process
Project concepts created to combine art exhibition with party space; concepts communicated to Indian artists
Be communications interface between artists and festival production
Meeting artists in India and travelling with them as a tour group to Australia; managing tour group
Results
Results
Creation of immersive and vibrant party environment used as performance platform by BBC Asian Network artists
Media exposure and touring opportunities for Indian artists
Introduction of new audiences to artform
Engagement of audience on different levels (note the responses of members of the Indian community in South Australia, some of whom became emotional)
Achieving Client Objectives
Achieving Client Objectives
Showcase created for artform which had not been featured at the WOMAD festivals before
New audience created for artform in UK and Australia
More diverse audience profile created for WOMAD festival . This was mainly true in Australia, where the festival typically attracts a white demographic
A celebration of diversity at a time of racial tension in South Australia
Creation of international relationships between commercial festival and community providers
Here's a film which was made about the project by Simon Hanson
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