Holi Festival success as Durham Oriental Museum hosts celebrations

The Oriental Museum in Durham, part of the city's university, welcomed visitors to celebrate the Indian Spring festival of Holi - which is known as the Festival of Colours - with a range of activities. However all planned outdoor activities, including the famous powder throwing, were cancelled because of snow and icy conditions in the week leading up to the event.

Children making colourful artwork at the Oriental Museum. (Image: Stuart Boulton)

Read next: Holi festival is a colourful way to start spring

Despite the traditional centrepiece event's absence, those who attended enjoyed music, rangoli drawing, storytelling, facepainting and more inside the museum.

Holi is a traditional Hindu festival which marks the end of Winter and the beginning of the Indian Spring.

Celebrations start the night before Holi where people gather at a bonfire and pray for internal evils to be destroyed by the fire. The next morning people celebrate by covering each other in colour - many people throw powder although water guns and water balloons are also be used. Anybody within the vicinity is considered fair game for receiving colour!

There was still plenty of colour to be seen despite the cancellation of the powder throwing. (Image: Stuart Boulton)

The festival always falls on the last full moon of the Hindu calendar month. This year Holi fell on 8 March.  However, many events in Western cities, including powder throwing, often take place on a weekend if the date falls on a weekday.

In Durham this year, people were entertained by traditional Indian dancing as well as facepainting and art activities.

The Oriental Museum was set up in 1960 to house Durham University's 23,500 Chinese, Egyptian, Korean, Indian, Japanese and other far east and Asian artefacts.

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The museum is home to over 1,500 Indian objects, and more 5,000 photographs taken by John Marshall, an archaeologist who oversaw many projects over decades in the subcontinent, including excavations at Indus Valley Civilisation sites Harappa and Mohenjo Daro.