Bhubaneswar: Artists from around the world will gather here to document Old Town through innovative artworks.

The government and art organisation Utsha Foundation will launch the public art project, Bhubaneswar Art Trail, to involve the community and artists to understand how a city is remembered.

This project will take on a 1.3km trail in the historical part of Bhubaneswar. The street houses, medieval monuments, modern and contemporary architecture, schools, shops, and public institutions will be part of the project where artists will explore the edifices from different time periods and interact with community members to map the transformation and record their memories and aspirations, dreams and yearnings about the city.

This project aims to explore the history, lived realities and social relations of various communities and will address issues of access, exclusion, and discrimination.

"Through these various individual interventions, our objective is to enhance an art practice that emerges from the local community and involves the local art scene," event curator Jagannath Panda.

The theme of the event is "Navigation is Offline" and will be curated jointly by Panda and Premjish Achari.

"We are attempting to understand the memories, stories, tales and the histories associated with the people living around this trail. We, as travellers, will chronicle its biography. We will tell tales of our own journeys while listening to new ones from Bhubaneswar," said Panda.

Twenty artists, including Gigi Scaria, Sudarshan Shetty, Arunkumar H.G., Markus Baenziger, will take part in the project.

"The participation of the local community is an important aspect. They will provide us with their residential space to display artworks," he said.

The artists will stay in Old Town for a month and interact with local community members and art students.

The public exhibition will be seen and experienced as a walk from one part of the trail to the other. Various outreach programmes such as seminars, children's workshops, film screenings and cultural programmes have been planned. The project will begin on October 18 and conclude on December 18 with plans for more such trails.