Last year I was lucky enough to oversee the planning and coordinating Culture Cafe’s Diwali event - Jashn-e-Diwali. It took place in the Roundhouse main space, and we sold over a 1000 tickets. The planning process had its fair share of issues and complexities which were hard to deal with at first. Working with external vendors and ensuring smooth communication between all parties involved proved to be a task. It took a decent amount of time to find a communication structure that was beneficial to everyone.  

This was the largest event I’ve ever had to plan, and I felt extremely grateful to be in the position I was in. We began planning this event over 6 months before it took place in November of 2023. Thankfully it was not just me planning this project and I had wonderful supervision supporting me to make this event happen. Since the Roundhouse was such a large space, we strived to ensure that everyone there always had something to do apart from eating, drinking & dancing. We wanted to utilise the entire space; we brought in other vendors who provided awesome activations, like henna, to keep everyone engaged. Additionally, I was so lucky to have a group of around 15-20 volunteers on the night to help bring the event to life - not just to increase the presence of Culture Cafe, but also make sure everything ran smoothly behind the scenes. 

On the night, everything went extremely well and I was shocked to see so many people there to celebrate Diwali. It was especially wonderful to see students from different cultures attend with the goal of learning more about the festival and to be there for the festivities. At the beginning we were aiming for 800-850 people. Little did we know that over a 1000 people were going to show up! 

I am so keen to see what the 2024 Culture Cafe team has in store for Diwali this year, although I have no doubt whatever they do it's going to be bigger and better than last year.