Culfest

A culfest (short for cultural festival) is an annual event organized by colleges in India. Every college has its own culfest.

Though in theory, cultural festivals can be organized by anybody, all established culfests are organized by high schools or colleges. In some Indian cities, the culfests of the local colleges are important community events.

1 Function
2 General format
3 List of culfests in India
- 3.1 North
- 3.2 West
- 3.3 East
- 3.4 South

Function

Culfests serve the following functions:

Provide an environment to meet people.
Allow people to participate in various literary or cultural events, with a spirit of friendly competition.
Provide entertainment in the form of concerts, dances and food.
Generate revenue for the college.
Work experience for the student organizers.
Brand-building for the college.

General format

Most college culfests last from two to five days. The events in a culfest can be broadly classified into three sections:

Literary events

Literary events usually include quizzes, word games, creative writing and some form of public speaking or debate.

Cultural events

These include such competitions as Music, Dance, Fine arts and Dramatics.

Professional events

One or more professionally staged entertainment programs may be scheduled. Typical choices are an Indian classical music concert, a rock show, or lighter Jazz fusion concerts.

By convention, there is no entry fee for watching any of the literary or cultural events. Participation in the events may or may not be free, depending on the policy of the individual college.

Culfests organized by high schools are of much shorter duration, two days at the longest. They also tend to be more restrictive than colleges in the events allowed and conduct expected.