A Tale of Two Cities

Bengaluru and San Francisco have a good deal more in common than one might have thought. They're both the ' silicon' capitals of the world and growing hubs of innovation, entrepreneurship and technology. In 2008, they signed an agreement making them ' sister cities' ( San Francisco has several, including Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, Amman, Assisi and Barcelona, to name a few). Bridges are made through collaborations, exchanges of information and knowledge and largely, public art. The eighth edition of Festival of Stories, by Art in Transit, will transform Cubbon Park into a canvas / performance arena, where history, art, innovation and technology come together to create a new, emerging picture of Bengaluru.

In 2014, the Bengaluru Metro Rail Transport Corporation and Srishti Institute of Art Design and Technology, got together to engage creatively with public spaces across the city. Metro Stations became their canvas, brought alive through installations, murals, discussions and festivals In San Francisco, mosaic works by Alfonso Pardinas in Lake Merritt and William Mitchell's wall reliefs in Lake Merrit, Richmond, are all products of the Bay Area Art In Transit Programme.

"We work by collaborating with artists in San Francisco," says Arzu Mistry, Project Lead, Art in Transit Bengaluru. "We explore questions about the changing nature of our two cities as both support a growing tech industry and are simultaneously sites for large- scale migration." Here, change is both rapid and diverse.

The ' Mapping with