Delhi Arts & Health Festival — Programme

Five Days. Multiple Perspectives. One Shared Conversation.

The Delhi Arts & Health Festival unfolds across five days through workshops, performances, exhibitions, conversations, installations, research exchanges and community experiences — in venues, public spaces and neighbourhoods across Delhi.

Festival Experience

Festival Experience Pathways

The Delhi Arts & Health Festival does not ask you to sit and watch. It asks you to participate, contribute and be changed by what you encounter.

Across five days and multiple venues, visitors can move fluidly between different modes of engagement — from quiet reflection and intimate workshops to large-scale performances, public installations, research exchanges and community gatherings. Every form of participation is equally valued.

Performances & Exhibitions

Workshops & Labs

Conversations & Research

Community & Public Experiences

No two visitors will experience the festival the same way. That multiplicity is the point.

○ Reflect

Listening, Thinking, Exchanging

Reflect experiences invite you to slow down, pay attention, and think together. These sessions create conditions for genuine intellectual and emotional exchange — between disciplines, perspectives and lived experiences.

Panels & Talks

Conversations

Roundtables

Research Exchanges

Symposia

Open Q&A

“What can I learn here that I cannot learn anywhere else?”

◎ Immerse

Making, Moving, Experiencing

Immerse experiences are hands-on, bodily and participatory. You will make things, move, create and explore — guided by artists and practitioners working at the intersection of creativity and care.

Workshops

Movement Practices

Creative Exploration

Participatory Art

Labs & Studios

Making & Craft

“What happens when I stop watching and start doing?”

◈ Discover

Seeing, Exploring, Encountering

Discover experiences fill the city with art. Wander through exhibitions, encounter installations in unexpected places, engage with public art and interactive spaces that invite you to look at Delhi — and yourself — differently.

Exhibitions

Public Art

Installations

Interactive Spaces

Site-specific Work

Outdoor Art

What will you find when you look more carefully?

◉ Energise

Performing, Celebrating, Gathering

Energise experiences are alive, collective and celebratory. Performances, concerts, dance, theatre and civic gatherings that remind you what it feels like to be part of something larger than yourself.

Performances

Music & Concerts

Dance & Theatre

Celebrations

Public Gatherings

Commissioned Works

When did you last feel genuinely moved?

◎ Refresh

Resting, Restoring, Connecting

Refresh spaces are the festival’s lungs. Wellbeing areas, resource hubs, community marketplaces and gathering spaces where you can pause, breathe, browse and connect — without agenda.

Wellbeing Spaces

Resource Hubs

Marketplace

Community Areas

Quiet Zones

Care Corners

What does rest look like when it is also culture?

Thematic Areas

Festival Thematic Areas

The festival is organised around eleven thematic areas, each exploring a distinct dimension of arts, health and community life. These themes cut across all five pathways — you may encounter any of them in a workshop, a performance, a conversation or a public installation.

MENTAL HEALTH & EMOTIONAL WELLBEING

Inner life, psychological resilience and emotional flourishing

Sessions explore how creative practice supports resilience and healing — from anxiety and depression to trauma, grief and the everyday weight of modern life.

CREATIVITY & SELF-EXPRESSION

Making, voice, identity and the creative impulse as vital force

Workshops, studios and participatory experiences centred on identity and expression — making as a means of discovering who we are and who we might become.

COMMUNITY & COLLECTIVE CARE

Solidarity, mutual aid and the health of shared social bonds

Exploring belonging and mutual support — how communities sustain each other, and how creativity builds the bonds that hold us.

ARTS IN HEALTHCARE

Art practice within clinical, therapeutic and hospital environments

Conversations, research and practice exchanges around arts in clinical and therapeutic settings — and what healthcare practice looks like when creativity is central.

PUBLIC HEALTH & SOCIAL CHANGE

Policy, advocacy and art’s role in transforming civic health

How arts and culture drive advocacy and systems change — from grassroots campaigns to national policy and urban planning.

GENDER, SEXUALITY & QUEER WELLBEING

Identity, embodiment and the politics of being and belonging

Experiences centred on inclusion and visibility — celebrating queer creativity, challenging norms and creating safer, more expressive communities.

DISABILITY, ACCESS & INCLUSION

Universal design, crip culture and reimagining access as art

Centred on accessibility and participation — crip art, universal design principles, and the creative potential of difference.

ARTS, CULTURE & HERITAGE

Living traditions, intangible heritage and cultural memory as medicine

Exploring cultural memory and traditions — how our inherited forms of art, ritual and storytelling sustain health across generations.

NATURE, ECOLOGY & SUSTAINABILITY

Ecological health, environmental art and our relationship with the living world

Art practices rooted in ecological wellbeing — from land art and nature-based healing to environmental grief and climate justice.

PLAY, JOY & CELEBRATION

Levity, festivity and the radical politics of having fun

Experiences devoted to celebration and joy — the serious business of play, humour and festivity as genuine health practice.

RESEARCH, EDUCATION & PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Evidence, inquiry and building the field of arts and health together

For practitioners, researchers and educators: professional learning and research exchange at the frontier of arts and health.

Programme Calendar

What’s Coming

AUGUST 2026

First Announcements

The first wave of the programme is revealed.

The first wave of DAHF programme is revealed — initial themes, headline artists and practitioners, and the shape of the week confirmed. Sign up to be among the first to know.

SEPTEMBER 2026

Workshops, Speakers & Performances

The full programme opens for early registration.

Workshops, keynote speakers, ensemble performances, research sessions and community experiences are announced in full. Pathways open for early registration.

OCT — NOV 2026

Full Festival Schedule

Build your own festival journey.

The complete five-day schedule is published across all venues. Explore by pathway, theme, day or location. Build your own festival journey.

DECEMBER 2026

The Festival

Five days, multiple venues, one shared conversation.

Delhi Arts & Health Festival takes place across the city — five days, multiple venues, one shared conversation about arts, health and what it means to care.

The programme is being shaped now. Join us.

Stay Informed →