ICHCAP

The India Heritage Walk Festival (IHWF) 2019 is back with a month-long celebration of India’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage, led by Sahapedia in partnership with UNESCO. The festival is also supported by the National Mineral Development Corporation. The first edition of the festival, organized in February 2018, went on to receive the PATA Gold Awards 2018 in Heritage and Culture.

With its varied lineup, IHWF explores the diversity that characterizes the cultural fabric of India as seen in food, heritage, nature, art, architecture, and so on. There will be walks, talks, workshops, and Instameets across India covering a broad spectrum of Indian heritage and culture. The festival has scaled in its reach through the inclusion of over thirty-five cities and more than a hundred events across the country.

Ranging from museums and historically significant monuments and markets, to explorations of interesting natural landscapes and areas known for their rich cuisine, and to women-oriented narratives, the program is curated thematically. The focus has been to encourage and increase different forms of engagement with interesting and important heritage spaces while also ensuring that these heritage spaces are made accessible to various audience groups. These efforts have also been specially directed towards those groups for whom engagement programs in heritage spaces are commonly unavailable, such as children, the differently abled, and those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. IHWF has also curated special walks and events with specific user groups in mind, such as students, travelers, local residents, and professional groups, including photographers, and conservationists.

Through the festival, Sahapedia and UNESCO aim to highlight these issues to other institutions in the culture space and emphasize the need to make heritage spaces more interesting and inclusive.

Sahapedia is a not-for-profit society as well as a knowledge enterprise that offers an open encyclopedic resource on the arts, cultures, and histories of India and South Asia.