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Construction of the SAARC Cultural Centre

1

At the 10th SAARC Summit held in Colombo, a decision was made to establish a South Asian Cultural Center in Colombo to promote the arts confined to South Asia. This decision was made to share, preserve and promote the richness and the diversity of intangible and oral cultural heritage inherent in South Asia for thousands of years and such intangible and oral cultural heritage.

This cultural center is considered as the main meeting place for the art related community of the regional countries. Thereby this designes the environment and facilities required for working together the individuals and groups belong to miscellaneous cultural fields. The activities expected to be carried out in this center will be related to various fields of arts such as dancing, music, drama, puppetry, painting, sculpture, cinema, photography, literature and archeology.

The center will operate as a stage for performance arts as well as a repository of traditional arts and cultural knowledge in Sri Lanka. The main hall and the assembly hall have been designed to support the learning and teaching process and the building structure has been arrange so as to carry out the activites of performing arts very easily.

Objectives

The main objective of this is to promote and preserve the cultural heritage of the region and provide assistance in enhancing the advanced traditions and cultural diversity. The other objective of this is to be the main meeting place for the art community of the region and to commence programmess to encourage the traditional arts of the region.

Location : Moraketiyahena, Navimana and Matara

Operating Institution : Ministry of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs

Proposed activities in this Centre

  • SAARC cultural events holding from time to time
  • SAARC Annual Art Festivals
  • Film Festivals
  • Programmes to make aware the school children on cultural items of the Region.
  • Networking of regional artistes at regional and global level
  • Conferences, seminars, Workshops, Art Camps, Literary Festivals, Book Exhibitions and Short Term Courses
  • Short-term programmes conducted by invited experts from various fields of art
  • Cultural exchange programmes and programmes related to the fields of art exhibitions, sculpture, photography, archaeology, dancing, drama and music.
  • Programmes related to quarterly newspapers, audio - visual productions, old documents and libraries.