A home for gathering that fosters Tamil and Dravidian art and literature, working in tandem with the Foundation's other pillars.
What it is
A venue built for performance, exhibitions, literature and festival life: the kind of hall a community needs when it wants to put on a play, hold a poetry reading, mount an exhibition or mark a festival together. It is planned to serve Tamil and wider Dravidian art and literature specifically, and to work alongside the archive, the research body and the educational institution rather than sit apart from them.
Why here
Nallur Kandaswamy temple, pictured above, already anchors a great deal of Jaffna's festival and cultural life, and this pillar is not meant to replace institutions like it. What displacement and diaspora migration scattered was the community that once filled such spaces routinely. Heritage needs occasions to be practised in public, performed and argued over, not only written down and stored in an archive.
How it starts
Planned for Phase 2, 2028 to 2031, alongside the independent research body. By that point the Foundation expects to have a physical base in Point Pedro or Valvettithurai from the Phase 1 archival centre, and the cultural centre is intended to build outward from that existing site rather than start on entirely new ground.