When cultural institutions crumble, archives burn, and instruments shatter, it is not merely walls that vanish—it is memory, identity, and moral courage. Culture cannot be revised; it is what history has written. Every assault upon it shakes the quiet foundations of a nation’s conscience.

The festival concludes on Saturday with Mahuya Manjari Sunanda performing Rabindranath Tagore’s lesser-known “Bhanga Gaan”.

The organisers said the programme seeks to reaffirm the role of music and culture as powerful tools of protest, resilience, and communal harmony in the face of intolerance.

There are exhibitions you walk into, and there are exhibitions that feel like you are stepping across a threshold into someone else’s world. “Pawmum Parban”, currently underway at Alliance Française de Dhaka, unfolds like the latter; carrying a depth that quietly rearranges how you look at a culture you thought you vaguely knew. I went in expecting an art show and left with the sense that a small group of children from the hills had succeeded in doing something the city often fails at: making us feel something beyond our own noise.

Anuswar Theatre is bringing back its acclaimed production “Mahashunye Cycle” with a fresh run at the Nilima Ibrahim Auditorium of Bangladesh Mohila Samity, a year after its stage debut. The play will be performed seven times over four consecutive days, from December 24 to 27.

Nearly every room was vandalised, property was looted, and parts of the building were set on fire. Police and army personnel arrived shortly after the incident, brought the situation under control, and extinguished the flames. Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) were also present at the scene.

Within the scarred walls of Chhayanaut, the repair of a broken harmonium is more than a maintenance task, it is an act of institutional defiance.

The theatre festival will continue until December 26. Plays will be staged every evening at the main auditorium of the National Theatre Hall of Shilpakala Academy.

The Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy has announced that all previously scheduled events and exhibitions will resume from December 21, 2025, following the conclusion of the state mourning period.

Bangladesh Udichi Shilpigoshthi took to the streets of the capital this morning, staging a protest march and rally to condemn the arson attack on its central office—an assault that, the organisation says, has wiped out 55 years of cultural archives and struck at the heart of the country’s progressive movement.

A photography-based platform, Chobir Golpo, has announced a nationwide photography competition titled “The story of returning home after 17 years”, centring on BNP acting chairman Tarique Rahman’s return to the country.

Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy has announced the suspension of all its programmes and exhibitions, citing security risks

Young artist Khing Shai Mong Marma, who has long been engaged in artistic practice and has participated in numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad, is set to inaugurate his first solo painting exhibition, titled “Rowa Daw,” in Bandarban on Friday at 4 pm.

The narrative insists that this is not an isolated story. It could unfold in any country, any city.

A group photography exhibition documenting the life, culture and traditions of the Manipuri community in Bangladesh opened at the Bishwo Shahitto Kendro Art Gallery in Banglamotor on December 12.

Munier Chowdhury, Syed Waliullah, Nurul Momen and Sayeed Ahmed were already testing the limits of expression through plays such as “Kabar”, “Bohipir”, “Nemesis”, “Kalbela” and “Trishna”. Politics haunted these works, but repression kept them from fully unfolding.

A week-long cultural festival featuring Mro children and members of the indigenous community from Bandarban has begun at Alliance Française de Dhaka. Titled “Pawmum Parban 2025”, the festival started today and will continue until December 24.

Veteran actor Faruk Ahmed is set to make his debut as a theatre director with “Rangmahal”, marking a new chapter in his more than four-decade-long association with Dhaka Theatre.

Necropolitics— a social or political power that determines who gets to live and who does not. Just the thought of this unfair monstrosity makes one shiver, doesn’t it? But it is the way of the world now. To make a bold statement against necropolitics all around the world, The University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) presented “Rupantor: The Resonance Show”, a sustainability-focused fashion and performance project that transformed discarded materials into wearable narratives, with design, movement and social reflection.

Choudhury offered a stark diagnosis of the present. Bangladesh, he said, is moving away from the spirit of the martyred intellectuals for two reasons: a shrinking practice of history and its growing distortion; and a widening distance from the dreams and consciousness of the Liberation War.