What is Culture Shoq?
From poetry slams and live bands to short film screenings, magic, stand-up comedy and world cinema, since 2008 we have introduced over 30 successful concept-based nights, promoted more than 200 artists in 10 cities all over India, and hosted over 400 events (that's one every four days over the last 5 years) and most importantly, we love vocational education and curate activities and hands-on workshops on music, film, poetry, dance and art at spaces across Mumbai. We also partner with youth-based college festivals like Malhar at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai and Mood I at IIT Powai and cultural events like the Kala Ghoda and Celebrate Bandra festivals to help support the growing indie art movement.
How did we start?
We started with and also still run the longest sets of Open Mics in the country across poetry, comedy and music with The Big Mic and have recently started taking baby steps with two more Big Mics for Magic and Rap. We've always felt a severe lack of creative spaces in any city that let you express yourself. Add to that existing communities and platforms around that time and a few now that we felt were far too critical of first time performers or people who just wanted to give their respective passions a shot. This would more often than not leave them with little or no confidence to go back up.
Our Open Mic communities are based on fostering relationships with fellow amateur and professional artists who are supportive of new talent and educate and assist in its development. We are extremely happy and proud of such a diverse community of talented artists in our country and our impact on audiences across cities has translated into fresh experiences each time.
We have event communities that are devoted to songwriters and singers with Notes in a song, where musicians come and talk pour their heart out talking about the inspiration behind their music to our Pub Quiz - Mindgames, where participants take on each other for cerebral glory, AV with Gravy for fellow travellers meet to trade stories and travel experiences to Monster Battles that supports the fledging Hip-Hop community with public competitions of skill. These are just some of spaces we create with our commitment to grow and develop the arts in our country.
What we do.
Our country is going through a tremendous surge what with all us misfits going against the tide and finally investing time, love and energy in a passion as opposed to a routine. We instigate (difficult) change by urging venues and free spaces to consider unique concepts that create spaces for the indie art movement as we believe that these differentiators will help a scene that we all love so much grow as well as creating friendly venue spaces that are genuine in their support for the arts.
The founding partners of Culture Shoq include: Pramod Sippy, music lover and veteran house music DJ who has gigged across the country for 15 years, Sudeip Nair, a hotelier with a keeda for all things culture and Rajeesh Marar a ex- chemical engineer who gave up his day job to follow a passion for the arts. Throw them all in a mixie and press play!
We've got our sights firmly focused on the arts and culture space in the subcontinent. We would love to have you join us at one of our events to support and experience the countrys growing counter-culture community of artists.