Supported by a $200,000 Maitri Grant, the partnership will create new pathways for artists, audiences and presenters across Australia and India, with activity taking place across Adelaide Fringe and Kommune’s flagship events, including Spoken Fest Mumbai.

At its heart, the project is about exchange. Not just artists travelling between countries, but ideas, stories, audiences and creative networks moving in both directions.

The connection between Adelaide Fringe and Kommune has grown through Honey Pot, Adelaide Fringe’s international arts marketplace.

Honey Pot brings artists, programmers and presenters together during the festival, creating opportunities for shows to tour, develop and find new audiences beyond Adelaide. For Kommune, it opened the door to a deeper relationship with Fringe and a clearer sense of what might be possible between the two countries.

Mumbai-based director of Kommune, an Indian collaborative arts collective, Tess Joseph said “If I hadn’t attended Honey Pot in 2025, 'We Belong' may have never come to be.

“Honey Pot gave me the chance to experience the festival not from the outside, but from within. I watched so many shows, met artists and programmers, understood the freedom of the Fringe space, and began to dream about Kommune having shows in Adelaide.”

That experience has now helped shape a longer-term cultural exchange, with artists and audiences in both countries set to benefit.

Across 2027 and 2028, the partnership will support a range of activity designed to build genuine creative and industry links between Adelaide and India.

The program will include Adelaide Fringe artists performing shows at Spoken Fest Mumbai, Indian artists and bilingual Hindi-English works presented at Adelaide Fringe in 2027 and 2028, and Australian artists supported to connect with India’s growing live performance and touring networks.

For Adelaide Fringe artists, this creates a direct opportunity to meet new audiences and presenters in one of the world’s most exciting cultural markets. For Indian artists, it creates a pathway into Adelaide Fringe’s open-access festival environment, where new work can reach broad audiences and connect with international industry.

Spoken word, storytelling and live literature have long been part of the way communities make sense of who they are. These forms are immediate, personal and deeply connected to language, place and lived experience.

That makes them a natural fit for cultural exchange.

Through this partnership, audiences in Adelaide and India will have the chance to experience work that moves between languages, cultures and performance traditions. The inclusion of bilingual Hindi-English works also reflects the way contemporary storytelling often sits across more than one world, carrying local identity while speaking to global audiences.

For Adelaide Fringe, the project continues the festival’s commitment to creating a platform where diverse voices, new stories and international collaboration can thrive.

Kommune is one of India’s most recognisable creative collectives for live storytelling, poetry and spoken word performance, with a strong digital community and reach across India’s major cities.

Its flagship festival, Spoken Fest Mumbai, has become a major gathering point for writers, poets, performers, musicians and audiences drawn to live story-driven performance.

Spoken Fest has also received recent industry recognition at the WOW Awards Asia 2026, the region’s largest awards and recognition platform for the experiential marketing, live events, entertainment and wedding industries. Spoken Evening events in Lucknow and Indore won Gold for Festival of the Year, Art/Culture/Lifestyle under 10,000 attendees, while Spoken Fest Mumbai 2026 received Silver for Festival of the Year, Art/Culture/Lifestyle above 10,000 attendees.

That recognition reflects the strength of Kommune’s work and the growing appetite for live storytelling experiences across India.

The partnership is not only about presenting shows. It is about building pathways that last beyond a single event.

For artists, international touring can be difficult to access without the right networks, introductions and context. By connecting Adelaide Fringe artists with Kommune, Spoken Fest and India’s wider live performance sector, the program is designed to help artists understand where their work might travel, who it might speak to, and how it could develop for new audiences.

It also gives Indian artists a clearer route into Adelaide Fringe, where open-access participation can help new work find audiences, industry interest and future touring opportunities.

This is the kind of exchange that sits at the centre of Adelaide Fringe’s broader purpose: helping artists take risks, reach new people and build sustainable creative careers.

The Maitri Grant supports projects that strengthen cultural and people-to-people links between Australia and India.

For Adelaide Fringe, the partnership with Kommune is a practical expression of that goal. It brings together two countries with rich storytelling traditions and two creative communities interested in what live performance can do when artists are given room to connect.

It also reflects the role festivals can play in cultural diplomacy. Festivals are not just places where work is presented. They are meeting points where artists, presenters, audiences and communities build trust, curiosity and future opportunity.

Through this partnership, Adelaide Fringe and Kommune will create new ways for Australian and Indian artists to share work, learn from each other and build relationships that continue well beyond the stage.

The first major outcomes from the partnership will unfold across Adelaide Fringe and Spoken Fest activity in 2027 and 2028.

Audiences can expect new international work, bilingual performance, Australian artists appearing in India, and Indian artists bringing new stories to Adelaide.

For Adelaide Fringe, it is another step in growing the festival’s global connections while keeping artists at the centre.

For Kommune, it is an opportunity to build on its strong live storytelling movement and connect with one of the world’s great open-access arts festivals.

Most importantly, it gives artists from both countries something every performer needs: a new room, a new audience and a new reason to keep telling the story.