No better venue than Colombo for arts festival in Sri Lanka
Colombo is the best venue for a 3-day arts festival starting end January, according to the organisers of Standard Chartered Colomboscope 2014.
This was the response to a question by the Business Times to the organisers, during a media conference on the event at the Goethe Institute on Thursday, as to why the festival is being held in the capital instead of any other part of the country.
Goethe Institute Director, Bjorn Ketels said, “The Standard Chartered Colomboscope is a very complex programme. All cultural centres have their own infrastructure and supply. Also the largest interest for arts and culture is seen in Colombo than anywhere in the country.”
Looking at festivals taking place in other parts of the island, majority of the people is from Colombo to see the programme, he added. Colombo has many undiscovered places and this is what Colomboscope is all about. The festival is trying to guide the audience to places where they haven’t been, to discover new venues, new locations and interesting areas, he noted.
Mr. Ketel also specifically mentioned that any arts or literature festival is not meant to attract the rural villagers, but an intellectual crowd. Culture is elite in a way, at least when it comes to literature and academic discussions. There are other programmes like musical shows which could be held anywhere in the country and people enjoy it. It makes more sense having it in Colombo where the big universities, big educational institutions where most of the writers and thinkers of the country are based.
With regard to how this initiative would help the county’s development Mr. Ketel pointed out that it is always a question as to how culture supports economic development. The vivid cultural arena always makes a country more attractive and it will not stop or hinder the economic development. Having events like this makes a country more interesting. Sri Lanka now has big opera houses, theatres etc and a lot of people appreciate having this kind of infrastructure. This is one more contribution to have a more vivid and active cultural lifestyle in Colombo which supports Colombo as a dwelling expanding economic hub.
“One of the wonderful things about economic development is that when it happens people start to appreciate art and culture and pay a lot of patronage which is a sign of an economically developed society. The more people come into the country with more corporate support providing patronage, the more they appreciate it. When festivals like this happen it goes through foreign media to other countries and increases the interest on Sri Lanka including tourism,” said Radhika Hettiarachchi, Standard Chartered Colomboscope Festival Curator on the sidelines of the press conference.
Adding to that she said, amidst a lot of negative publicity, this kind of an initiative is a positive thought because it looks at creating arts that everyone enjoys. It shares an aspect of Sri Lanka that people don’t hear a lot about. It provides a positive outlook to see Sri Lanka as in the future.
She also said that the reason to have the festival in Colombo was that finance was limited and with a lot of different restrictions they were forced to have it in Colombo.
The Standard Chartered Colomboscope will be held from 30th January to 3rd February 2014 under the theme ‘Making History’.