Our Story

A five-month-old foundation in Patna, named after the day a village gathers to sing.

The Idea

Gramotsav means the festival of the village

In rural Bihar the gramotsav is the day the whole gaon turns out. People sing, people perform, and the old stories get handed down one more time. It is also where a good many children first find out they have something worth saying out loud.

We think that is roughly how children learn best too. Not sitting still while a syllabus is read at them, but inside something that is actually happening: a lok geet they can join, a taal they can hold on to.

We were incorporated as a Section 8 non-profit company in Patna on 19 March 2026. We are small and we intend to stay specific. Folk culture, inclusive education, and a route from creative skill towards a living: that is the whole remit, and we write every programme up so another organisation could run it without us.

What we set out to do

Our founding objects, as registered in our Memorandum of Association, are:

To preserve, promote and revitalise the folk traditions and cultural heritage of rural and indigenous Indian communities, and build awareness and appreciation for them across diverse communities.
To design and implement programmes for holistic development through inclusive platforms that strengthen traditional cultural identity and practices.
To collaborate with indigenous communities and relevant institutions to integrate arts and culture into educational programmes, fostering holistic wellbeing.
To promote gender equality by establishing institutional resource centres and community spaces that host educational and cultural activities.

How We Work

Five commitments we hold ourselves to

Accessibility is designed in, not added later

If a method only works for a child who can see the page, it is not our method. Accessibility shapes the teaching from the first baithak onward.

Children create, they do not only consume

A room is only a creative space if the young people in it are making something. Ours are built around riyaz, improvisation, and performances the students put together themselves.

We teach the songs that are already here

Bhojpuri, Maithili and Magahi traditions, folk instruments, festival songs, oral storytelling. That is the material we teach with. A child who ends up proud of where they come from has learned something worth having.

We say what music can and cannot get you

We promise nobody employment. We do lay out the actual routes: performance, teaching, ensemble work, recording, running something of your own. And we start that conversation while the riyaz is still going on, not once it is over.

We document so others can copy us

Every project ends in a written record: what we did, how it went, what we got wrong. Our closure reports go up on this site where anyone can read them.

Families and children gathered at a community cultural event

Where We Work

Patna, and the districts around it

Our registered office is in Patna, and sessions run in schools, special schools and community learning spaces around the city. Bihar has a folk tradition that is still very much alive and a serious shortage of accessible education. We work in the space between those two facts.

We start inside institutions that already exist. It gets material to students faster, it builds up the teachers who are already in the room, and nothing collapses the day a grant ends.

Listening comes first. Wanting to try comes next. After that it is riyaz, and riyaz is mostly repetition, and repetition is where the confidence actually comes from.

Bring a stage to a child who has never had one

We are young, registered and ready to start. There is room for a partner on the Blind School Project, for someone to sponsor a cohort of learners, or for a saathi who can give us a morning a week.

Partner With Us Talk to the Team