Ziro Festival is more than a stage – it’s a meeting place.
Over the years, our artist development initiatives have brought together musicians, visual artists, architects, designers and cultural practitioners through residencies, workshops, collaborations and site-specific projects that transform the valley into a living laboratory of ideas.
In 2026, Ziro Festival hosts the India chapter of Circuit Mixers, an international artist residency programme.
Circuit Mixers brings together electronic music artists from South Africa, Switzerland and India through performances, residencies, workshops and creative exchange. The journey began at Groove Biennale in Johannesburg before travelling to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, with its final chapter unfolding in the Ziro Valley.
Rather than simply touring, participating artists spend time living, collaborating and engaging with local music communities, allowing each destination to shape their creative practice. At Ziro, this culminates in live performances, workshops and collaborations that celebrate the meeting of cultures, ideas and sound.
Circuit Mixers – networking project for FINTA DJ-producers in collaboration with the festivals Groove Biennale (Johannesburg, South Africa), Montreux Jazz Festival / Montreux Jazz Artists Foundation (Switzerland) and Ziro Festival (India) initiated and supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
Previous Programmes
Sustainability Residency Programme 2025
Launched in partnership with the Embassy of Switzerland in India and Bhutan, the programme invited international artists to work alongside local artisans, designers and young creatives to explore sustainability through art, architecture and community engagement.
The inaugural residency, led by Swiss scenographer Karin Bucher with collaborators Jennifer McInnis and Samuel Neff, resulted in Being with Nature—an interactive bamboo installation inspired by the Apatani folktale of the Mithun. Built with local artisans and supported by a mentorship programme for a young artist from Ziro, the project demonstrated how cultural exchange, traditional knowledge and contemporary design can come together to create lasting public art.
ZIRO FOCUS was an international collaborative project produced by Ziro Festival of Music, India in partnership with Focus Wales, UK. It featured showcases and artistic collaborations across both countries. The project was supported by British Council, as part of India/UK, a Together Season of Culture and the Arts Council of Wales. The project was series of work that revolved around the intersection of technology and arts. With the explosion of web3 and blockchain technology in 2020, this project moved on to the web3 space where artists and communities flourish, leading to more connections through culture.
According to the roadmap, in the first year (2020) of this project, regular on-ground exchange programmes at each other’s festivals were scheduled but the pandemic forced the team to look at alternatives. It led to the creation of Ziro Focus, a pioneer virtual festival where over 60 musicians from both countries came together in an interactive space that allowed artists to introduce their work to each other; new conversations between arts professionals; people from diverse cultures to meet each other; and audiences from over 10 countries to discover Welsh and Indian music. Attendees went on a treasure hunt navigating through a virtual world created to visually represent Ziro and Wrexham while listening to playlists from Indian and Welsh bands. It was a gathering of audiophiles, fans and artists that sparked an interest on how to explore connections in times of social distancing.
In 2021, two extremely diverse musicians, Mangka and Eadyth, from far away parts of the world came together to compose a song – ReRaReHei.
Coming from different backgrounds, cultures and sounds, Mangka and Eadyth were the most unlikely duo to work together on a piece of music. And yet they managed to collaborate without ever meeting each other in real life (IRL). Their first collaborative piece was co-written and produced over several Zoom meetings. The artists created two versions of the same song incorporating their signature sounds and styles. One version is folksy with heavy influences of Moirang Sai, a traditional form of storytelling in Manipur, while the other one drips with electronic and synthesiser sounds. The song was performed across the UK and India in 2022.
