My wife is also an expressive arts therapist cum mental health professional, Akshata Parekh is the director of the Pune Arts and Health Festival which is slated to happen between 3rd to 7th December 2025 all over Pune City. You can find more information on the festival here: https://www.puneartsandhealthfestival.com/

I’d like to dive into the amazing relevance of this festival in Pune and what it means to the world of Arts for Health, expressive arts therapy, drum circles activities, arts and mental health, and for overall health and well-being.

We’ll be activating multiple locations all over the city so that people living in all corners of the city will find a venue close to them. This is very important considering the traffic in Pune nowadays. This is truly a grassroots festival with the entire team being Puneri, including the facilitators and artists. This festival will feature musicians, artists of all kinds, psychologists, and some of the best expressive arts therapy & creative arts therapy programs and workshops. It’ll help us to spread awareness of this field of using arts for mental health and wellness. We’re especially excited because we have received a wonderful response from the venues, facilitators, and artists of Pune to be a part of this festival, offering engaging expressive arts therapy activities.

Here’s a video capturing the mood and energy of participants after a drum circle activity

We’re used to experiencing art from predominantly an aesthetic perspective most of the time. This festival and the associated activities, workshops, and performances will focus more on the process and the insights that the process of indulging in the arts sparks, making it one of the best expressive arts therapy programs. We have a rich history of the arts in Pune. Back in the day the therapeutic benefits of the arts was experienced as a part and parcel of staying a particular art form over a lifetime. Now, with the advances in research in the field of Arts based interventions for Health, we have been able to highlight and add more empirical details to these practices. This helps de-mystify a lot of things that may have been very effective, that we’ve heard our Gurus speak about but that have also turned us off of that particular art form since we live in a time where we’d like to know the basis of why, what and how. The Pune Arts And Health Festival is a place to know exactly this, ask questions, interact with our experts, panelists, and artists, and also experience expressive therapy activities first hand.

The field of Arts And Health is massive and covers many sub-fields such as mental health, emotional health, physical health, social or public health, and expressive arts therapy activities. We’re seeing a great increase in the uptake for the use of expressive arts based activities in hospitals; or as we’ve come to call it: Arts in Medicine or Arts on prescription. Just last week, our monthly community drum circle was a part of a global arts and well-being activation called the Young Leaders for Arts and Health: Pune Summit. 

I for one am very happy that the arts are making their way into our lives through many avenues. Listen to music, sing, drum, dance, paint, play an instrument… Whatever your calling may be, do it in whatever capacity you can, professionally or not. What matters is that you carve time out for yourself to be in the moment with your art, to be with a community with art, and participate in the best expressive arts therapy programs. It’s one of those few moments where we can just be. And then, who knows, it’ll help us get out of our own way and realise, with every cell in our bodies and minds, the therapeutic benefits of the arts. Just like our Gurus used to say… 

Come on out Pune, let’s drum, let’s sing, let’s move and let’s take steps to experience health and well-being the Taal Inc. way!
Come. Drum. Be One.
Varun Venkit