Overview

Hikayat… stories and lore that have been passed down from generation to generation over aeons. Each story is a vestige of unimaginable pasts packaged and presented in a palatable manner for the present. The literature festival at Pramiti is called Hikayat because it seeks to reinvent and reimagine contexts of relevance for the craft, consumption and artistic pursuit of literature.

In the midst of a digital ecosystem with numerous options for entertainment, the culture of engaging with literature has become just another option. The Pramiti Literature Festival was envisioned with the intent of promoting a habit of reading amongst our community of children and adults and create an environment for the critical inspection of literature in our lives. Over the course of the first few editions of the literature festival, an organic need for the critique of art at a political, aesthetic and philosophical tool emerged. Hikayat began to respond to this need through engaging with various artists who leverage the literary medium as a foundation for ideological expression while using related media to transcend the written word and allow for a more expressive interpretation of literature.

The Reading Challenge

Each engagement is centred around a theme of current importance and accompanied by the annual reading challenge and the publication of our literary magazine. The reading challenge entails a curated list of books sorted by academic progression that is related to the theme for the festival. The children read a selection of three to four books from this curation. To avoid the engagement being a passive activity of reading books, we create bespoke assignments that the children must complete to culminate the challenge.

The Literary Magazine

Hikayat also becomes an opportunity for the Pramiti Community to collate its creative literary output into a tangible and produced outcome. This has taken the form of a student-led initiative to curate, edit, design and produce an annual literary magazine. You may view the literary magazines we have created thus far under each edition of the magazine.