Buoyed by the ‘success’ of the first-ever Open Street Festival here recently, the Tourism Department is toying with the idea of holding Mysuru Art Festival and Mysuru Winter Festival in November and December to spread out tourist footfall by year-end and continue till the New Year, coinciding with the celebrations.
Instead of keeping the tourist-friendly events and activities in the city’s core, suggestions are pouring in to take the events beyond the city’s hub, holding activities such as cultural programmes in residential localities.
The authorities here were keen to expand what was being held in the previous years – December to Remember, as a year-end extravaganza for tourist attraction.
Sources in the Tourism Department told The Hindu that the Mysuru Art Festival, bringing artists of national and international repute to the city for an ‘artistic’ extravaganza, has been proposed for November. This is in continuation of tourism promotional events with the Dasara season turning out to be a “reasonably good” compared to the last two years. This event will have live art shows, open-street exhibitions and so on.
The art festival will be followed by Mysuru Winter Festival, which is likely to be a week-long festival, probably in December, coinciding with Christmas celebrations. This festival had been planned keeping in view Christmas vacations and drawing tourists again to Mysuru, holding innovative events.
On one of the days of the winter festival, an open-street festival will be planned owing to the encouraging response the festival got from the locals and tourists who thronged D. Devaraja Urs Road, the city’s most vibrant commercial hub that hosted the festival during Dasara.
3D Projection Mapping on the city’s most imposing structures starting with the Mysuru palace; cake exhibitions; variety shows and so on have been proposed as part of winter festival.
“Planning for the two back-to back festivals has begun and it all depends on the funds the department set asides,” a source said.
Meanwhile, tourist flow to Mysuru continued after Dasara with schools and colleges in the remaining parts of the State on vacation this month on. The vacation was altered only for schools and colleges in Mysuru district suiting the festivities.
