2–6 December 2026 · Delhi, India
Delhi Arts & Health Festival.
Reimagining Delhi as the Capital of Care
A week-long city-wide initiative where creativity and care meet. Across the city, artists, practitioners and communities come together to explore how the arts help us heal, connect and flourish.
Connection · Art Therapy · Music Therapy · Movement · Dance · Storytelling · Visual Arts · Community · Poetry · Indigenous Arts · Craft · Breathwork · Theatre · Meditation · Creative Writing · Creativity · Expression · Drum Circles · Folk Arts · Cultural Arts · Connection · Art Therapy · Music Therapy · Movement · Dance · Storytelling · Visual Arts · Community · Poetry · Indigenous Arts · Craft · Breathwork · Theatre · Meditation · Creative Writing · Creativity · Expression · Drum Circles · Folk Arts · Cultural Arts ·
Five Days. One City. A Shared Conversation.
5
Days
2–6 December 2026
150+
Experiences
Performances, workshops, talks & installations
100+
Artists, Facilitators & Speakers
From Delhi, India and across the world
20+
Venues Across Delhi
Hospitals, galleries, parks, universities & more
10,000+
Participants
Community members, clinicians, artists & students
All figures are indicative — subject to final confirmation.
These are the numbers we are building toward — join us in making them real.
The Field
What is Arts & Health?
Arts and health is a growing global field that recognises the power of creativity to improve wellbeing, support recovery, and strengthen communities. It brings artists, clinicians, researchers and citizens together around a shared belief: that care is not only clinical, but creative.
From dance in hospital wards to music in mental health settings, evidence increasingly shows that the arts play a vital role in how we heal, connect and thrive across the whole span of a life.
What the evidence shows:
- Creative engagement reduces stress, anxiety and social isolation.
- Participatory arts support recovery and rehabilitation.
- Cultural participation strengthens community resilience.
- The arts improve outcomes across mental and physical health.
- Creativity helps systems become more humane and connected.
When creativity meets care, communities are transformed.
How You’ll Experience the Festival
Festival Experience Pathways
Every participant finds their own way in. The festival is designed so you can move between registers — from stillness to celebration, from enquiry to practice, from solitude to community.
01
Reflect
Panels · Talks · Conversations · Roundtables · Research Exchanges
Sit with ideas. Hear from artists, clinicians, researchers and community voices on the intersections of creativity and care. Exchange knowledge across disciplines.
02
Immerse
Workshops · Movement Practices · Expressive Arts · Creative Exploration · Participatory Experiences · Skill-Building Sessions
Step into practice. Join hands-on workshops and somatic movement sessions led by artists and facilitators working at the edge of creative health.
03
Discover
Exhibitions · Installations · Public Art · Storytelling Projects · Interactive Spaces
Walk through works made in response to care, community and the city. Encounter art in hospitals, parks, galleries and unexpected spaces across Delhi.
04
Energise
Performances · Music · Theatre · Dance · Community Celebrations · Collective Experiences
Feel the energy of collective joy. Live performances, music, dance and celebratory public events that bring the festival to life across the city.
05
Refresh
Community Spaces · Wellbeing Zones · Resource Hubs · Marketplaces · Opportunities to Pause, Connect and Recharge
Find restoration. Dedicated spaces for rest, gentle practice, reflection and renewal — because caring for yourself is part of caring for others.
The Foundation
Why Arts, Health and Community?
Creativity
The Human Instinct
Creativity is one of the oldest forms of human expression. It helps us process, imagine and make meaning from experience.
In the context of health, creativity becomes a tool for reflection, resilience and repair.
Care
Beyond the Clinical
Care is more than treatment. It is attention, dignity and connection — the felt sense of being seen and held.
The arts expand what care can look like, reaching people where clinical systems alone cannot.
Community
Health Is Collective
We do not heal in isolation. Belonging, participation and shared experience are foundational to wellbeing.
The festival treats community as both the context and the outcome of care.
When we bring the arts into health, we do not simply add colour to the clinic — we change who gets to be an author of their own healing.
The City
Why Delhi?
Delhi is not simply a location. It is a city shaped by memory, migration, diversity, resilience and reinvention — a metropolis of thirty-five million people that holds within it the full complexity of modern India. DAHF does not take place in Delhi. It takes place with Delhi.
No other city on earth carries the same density of cultural institutions, healthcare infrastructure, policy architecture, and living artistic tradition in a single metropolitan geography. Delhi is at once a village, a capital, a crossroads and a laboratory. That is what makes it the right city for a festival that asks: what happens when art and health meet at scale?
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Cultural Density
From classical Kathak to contemporary performance, Delhi holds one of the world’s most layered artistic ecosystems — Mughal, colonial, modern and emergent in constant dialogue.
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Policy and Systems Influence
As India’s capital, Delhi is where decisions about health, culture and education are made. DAHF positions itself as a partner to that policy conversation, not a bystander.
✚
Healthcare Infrastructure
Home to AIIMS, hundreds of public hospitals, and a growing network of community health initiatives, Delhi is a living laboratory for health systems reform.
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Global Connections
Delhi’s diplomatic, academic and cultural networks connect it to every major city on earth. The festival is designed to move — bringing Delhi’s insights to the world and the world’s practices to Delhi.
Delhi, India
“A city of thirty-five million stories, reimagining what it means to care.”
Image: Delhi cityscape / community life photography — to be placed
Delhi as Collaborator
DAHF is conceived as a partnership with the city — not an event imported into it. The festival works with Delhi’s artists, clinicians, communities, institutions and policymakers to co-create something that could only happen here. Delhi’s complexity is not a challenge to manage. It is the creative material we work with.
A Festival Rooted in Place
Every venue, every artist, every community partner is chosen because of their relationship to this city and its people. The festival moves across Delhi — from cultural hubs to hospitals, from universities to parks — because care, like culture, belongs everywhere.
Delhi Arts and Health Festival 