Telling the stories of the North
Storytelling has been an art handed down through centuries, from the start of humankind itself. The ways and mediums have changed as a growing testament to our civilisation. Now, most stories are digital, and the expansion and multitude is something we’re still learning.
Now, with this digital space, anyone can tell their story, and that is what this team has done with their page Jaffnapedia. Jaffnapedia aims to tell the stories of all the facets of life in the northern district, and tell it through pictures.
We spoke to Kuganathan Priyatharsan, co-founder of Jaffnapedia and a medical student. He and his friend, Bhavana S, founded JaffnaPedia while they were studying a course on Digital Storytelling at the American Corner in Jaffna.
“JaffnaPedia is basically a Digital storytelling medium that seeks to capture everyday lives of Jaffna people and places.” Kuganathan told us. “ With it, we aim to break away the stereotypic views on Jaffna.”
They give great credit to the course they followed, which empowered the youth to be citizen journalists by optimizing the power of Photography, Social media and Digital tools.
During this course, they were introduced to ‘Everyday Projects, which used photography to challenge the stereotypical views on countries and places. Everyday Projects focuses on different places like Africa, the Middle east, Everyday Afghanistan, and even Sri Lanka. Inspired by the simple brilliance of it, Kuganathan and Bhavana started a documentary of life in their shoes.
“With this inspiration we thought of starting our Digital Storytelling journey. We wished to stand different from the name “Every day”, and on our quest for a name for our project, my brother (Kuganathan Kowsikanth) came up with the name “JaffnaPedia”. The word Pedia is derived from Greek word “paideia”. Which means “Upbringing” or “Education”. This reflected our vision.” Kuganathan said.
JaffnaPedia was launched on November 5, 2017 as an Instagram Handle. While they initially created their content out of photos taken by them and photos provided by our colleagues in the course, once the popularity grew and they received a wider audience, many enthusiastic photographers started contributing to their platform.
Scenes from everyday life in Jaffna: Pic courtesy JaffnaPedia
At the same time JaffnaPedia also aims to provide recognition and wider audience to their photographers and contributors, be they amateur and established.
Jaffnapedia continues to operate mainly through instagram (https://www.instagram.com/jaffnapedia/) but with time, after receiving considerable reach in Instagram, they extended their work to Facebook and created a Facebook page.
However, it didn’t start out that easy.
Kuganathan remembers that during the initial stages of this project, it was a challenge to find good photographs and expand their reach to a wider audience. He gratefully remembers the support of their digital story telling colleagues and friends who helped them to obtain the images. Progress was slow, but as the audience grew, content started coming to them.
Even then, they had one big challenge: Time. Both Kuganathan and Bhavana were studying parallel to this venture. But they continue to learn new ways to balance their interests and they are positive about overcoming this challenge.
The feedback they received was overwhelmingly positive. People loved to see the different stories of Jaffna through Photographs. Every photographer brought a different perspective of Jaffna to light. It was most exciting for expatriates to see how Jaffna was evolving, and they said as much to these creators.
The following was one such comment they received – “ I thank you so much for this page with all its stories and pictures. You’re bringing me that much closer to my – yet unknown and unvisited – paternal hometown which has been in my heart forever. Great and lovely work! Please do continue and post everything you get!!”
The duo state that the positive and constructive comments give them a huge boost to continue their work. They’re both very satisfied and happy, and they consider Jaffnapedia a big source of their happiness. While they don’t have immediate plans of expansion, they are waiting for inspiration to strike in the right way, and encourage followers to keep an eye out for new things coming up.
But for now, “you can expect a collection of photographs of Jaffna on various aspects like culture , places , tradition, Jaffna street photographs, Jaffna lifestyle and so on,” Kuganathan told us. “And of course, you can find photographers also.”
They’re always open to receiving content through the Instagram hashtag #jaffnapedia or by email to jaffnapedia@gmail.com, and they also scour the internet in search of photographs that reflect their vision, in order to approach them and request to feature them on their page with credits. For jaffnapedia, it’s not just about the photographs, but the photographers as well.
Not all the photographs make it, they tell us. They have a strict policy of avoiding photographs and captions that criticise individuals, traditions and institutions and hurt others in any way. Their vision, to build a Jaffna that is open, accepting, and defying stereotypes, is slowly becoming a reality.