Fusing Rhythms: Integrating Hip-hop and Rajasthani Culture into the Jaipur Latin Festival 2025
Höyden, Saara (2025)
2025
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025052214916
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2025052214916
Tiivistelmä
In a world rich of culture and traditions, is it possible to merge Hip Hop and Rajasthani culture into Latin dance festival while preserving the unique beauty of each? This product-based thesis explores how storytelling, gamification and experience design can be used to bring these elements together in an engaging and meaningful way, through the creation of a new festival concept for the existing Jaipur Latin Festival.
The Jaipur Latin Festival is a three-day long dance event where participants learn Bachata, Salsa, and Kizomba from different artists across India and abroad. In its first and only edition, organizer Girish Tiwari introduced Hip Hop and Indian cultural elements, such as belly dancing, as optional side workshop excluded from the main festival ticket. For the upcoming edition, the aim is to fully integrate these elements into the core of the festival. This is the part where the thesis is stepping in.
The literature research explores the theories and frameworks of experiences, gamification and storytelling. Additionally, the author has explored Rajasthani culture, Latin dances and Hip Hop from a festival participant’s perspective. A small research, including literature, online sources, and YouTube videos, was conducted to understand these festival elements more, and explore how they can be seamlessly merged.
Combining semi-structured interview with literature research helped lay the foundation for developing the final product: a new concept for the Jaipur Latin festival which brings Hip Hop and Rajasthani culture into the core of the festival content and theme. The result is redesigned festival schedule. It was created by using the previous edition’s workshop schedule as a starting point, gathering ideas for the new workshops, and blending them together in a fresh and creative way. As last, the whole concept was shaped and refined using three key frameworks: the Recipe for gamification, Freytag’s Pyramid for storytelling and the Defining Moments framework for experience design.
The writing process has been aided by generative AI in form of text checks, to maintain the readability without spelling mistakes. Sources have been cited following the Haaga-Helia’s own citation style.
The Jaipur Latin Festival is a three-day long dance event where participants learn Bachata, Salsa, and Kizomba from different artists across India and abroad. In its first and only edition, organizer Girish Tiwari introduced Hip Hop and Indian cultural elements, such as belly dancing, as optional side workshop excluded from the main festival ticket. For the upcoming edition, the aim is to fully integrate these elements into the core of the festival. This is the part where the thesis is stepping in.
The literature research explores the theories and frameworks of experiences, gamification and storytelling. Additionally, the author has explored Rajasthani culture, Latin dances and Hip Hop from a festival participant’s perspective. A small research, including literature, online sources, and YouTube videos, was conducted to understand these festival elements more, and explore how they can be seamlessly merged.
Combining semi-structured interview with literature research helped lay the foundation for developing the final product: a new concept for the Jaipur Latin festival which brings Hip Hop and Rajasthani culture into the core of the festival content and theme. The result is redesigned festival schedule. It was created by using the previous edition’s workshop schedule as a starting point, gathering ideas for the new workshops, and blending them together in a fresh and creative way. As last, the whole concept was shaped and refined using three key frameworks: the Recipe for gamification, Freytag’s Pyramid for storytelling and the Defining Moments framework for experience design.
The writing process has been aided by generative AI in form of text checks, to maintain the readability without spelling mistakes. Sources have been cited following the Haaga-Helia’s own citation style.