ICES has always viewed arts, culture and media as fundamental components of free and democratic societies. In times of peace and in times of war, arts, culture and media are vital in creating and nurturing a vibrant and engaged civil society through the promotion of truth, beauty, diversity and imagination.
ICES’s prior work in this area has included: the production, in the 1990s, of a pioneering documentary series on issues of armed conflict by some of Sri Lanka’s foremost directors; screenings of ground-breaking films, including the first Sri Lankan screening of the then banned Purahanda Kaluwara (Death on a Full Moon Day) in 2000 and a festival of Sri Lankan films addressing the conflict in 2005; art exhibitions for peace and reconciliation; support for Artists for Peace and the Road Painting Movement; literary evenings featuring prominent Sri Lankan authors; writers’ workshops; and media workshops.
Programme Objectives:
*
To undertake, catalyze and support innovative work in the arts, culture and media that actively contributes to a peaceful, just and inclusive society nationally, regionally and globally.
Since its inception, the late Regi Siriwardena – Sri Lanka’s foremost cultural critic and renowned playwright, novelist and thinker – led ICES’s effort in arts and culture. His death in 2004 left a gap at ICES and has presented an ongoing challenge to ICES to re-imagine its work in arts, culture and media.
The advent of ICES’s 25th year provides an opportunity for ICES to both revive and expand its work in arts, culture and media. As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations, ICES will launch its new Arts, Culture and Media Programme. Throughout the year, the Programme will launch an expanded series of projects and events co-ordinated to support ICES’s five thematic areas of work.
The aim of the Arts, Culture and Media Programme is to support and encourage artists, cultural workers and media practitioners to explore new forms, take creative risks and express the unspoken in the psyches of their cultures, polities and societies. As a means of accomplishing this objective, the Programme will provide a range of opportunities for creative exchange across the island and between different countries, with particular focus on countries and communities in or emerging from conflict and on marginalized populations. The Programme promotes and celebrates the idea that arts and culture form a universal language across divides. It also celebrates the free and open space that ICES has always provided for alternative idea and imaginative visions and innovative solutions.
