Echoes of Earth, India’s greenest festival that recently concluded its maiden Goa edition, set the precedent for other large-format festivals in terms of sustainable design by crafting the decor from recycled materials.
Showcasing its core ethos of sustainability and spreading awareness about Goa’s rich biodiversity and the Western Ghats through art, music and culture, the festival ensured that the stages and art installations present onsite were crafted from recycled and recyclable materials sourced locally.
Designed by the in-house team at Echoes of Earth, the colossal and intricate music stages were brought to life by artists Siddhartha Kararwal and Muzamil Shairff.
Kararwal crafted ‘The Kraken’ stage which paid homage to the Giant Pacific Octopus and ‘The Big Beak’ stage which paid tribute to the Great Indian Hornbill with reused metal as the structural base and recyclable fabric on the outside. Shairff constructed ‘The Ghost’ stage which paid homage to the Horned Ghost Crab from sheets of metal that were carefully pieced together.
“We wanted to emphasise the significance of the Western Ghats and Goa’s rich marine and forest biodiversity by selecting the Giant Pacific Octopus, the Great Indian Hornbill and the Horned Ghost Crab for the stages. We sourced the metal for ‘The Ghost’ stage from a junkyard in Mapusa. All the materials will be repurposed into something else in the coming editions of the festival as part of our circular design method,” stated Roshan Netalkar, festival director and founder of Echoes of Earth.
There were also 20-plus art installations training a spotlight on Goa’s diverse fauna crafted from upcycled and recycled materials.
Artist Akshay Manjrekar, who designed and crafted the Tailless Whip Scorpion installation out of metal tubes and rods, gunny sacks, coconut fibre, newspaper and glue made from white flour, was delighted to collaborate with the festival.
“It is a privilege to collaborate with Echoes of Earth, as our ideologies concerning sustainable and circular design are in alignment — I, too, have been designing and building installations with eco-friendly materials for several years,” stated Manjrekar.
Mohit Bhagat, whose artist name is AltNative, selected the Indian Gaur as his muse as it is Goa’s state animal, crafting it from automobile tyre tubes, tyres, water and cold drink bottles.
“Incorporating sustainability into our creation process sparked innovation by pushing us to source materials from scrap, prioritise reuse and minimise waste,” said Bhagat.
The multidisciplinary studio, Fosite, that worked on the Flying Draco Lizard installation, has collaborated multiple times with Echoes of Earth as they approve of the festival’s sustainable ideology.
“We utilised woven palm leaves to get a scaly skin texture and recycled metal pipes to create the internal body structure,” said Fosite.
