Karnali Arts Centre is a vision. It is an organization that is unraveling and becoming as we speak and write about it. We stand for the right to culture of every individual despite the imaginary lines drawn to create disparities, discriminations, and divisions. These imaginary lines may be geographical, political, or social in nature. We believe that through the preservation, promotion, and practice of arts and culture – both being interwoven into intricate patterns of livelihoods – we can re-establish and re-build a sense of belonging and worth amongst people who have either lost or are in the process of losing generations of local and cultural knowledge systems. It is a process of learning, documenting, archiving, curating, and sharing the tangible and intangible cultural heritages of the Karnali region into diverse narratives of “experiences” that anyone can have an access to. We want to acknowledge the layers to our experiences – myths, stories, songs, music, movements – and every layer enriches our experiences. We want to seed the next generation of holistic arts community in Karnali. We want to design and implement arts projects that incorporate a holistic idea of arts: various forms of artistic expressions inter-connected with various cultural experiences; and an amalgamation of these two can help achieve a holistic sense of arts in a community.
Our Story
Pampaa Phoola | Play based on local folklore, 2016 Photo by Kshitiz Shrestha
In 2062 BS, a group of local theatre artists performed a play called "Karnali Dakhin Bagdo Chha". This play represented not only the plights of Karnali but also its culture as it was performed in the Khas Bhasa. It ran for more than a month regularly at Gurukul Theatre, New Baneshwor. Every show was a full-house with people crowded, perspiring, engaged, and moved by the scenes unfolding in front of them. The projected river, the long ropeway, and arduous experiences of the people of Karnali by artists from Karnali was something that had never happened before.This created a momentum of acknowledging the complexities and realities of human struggle at the face of poverty, disparity, politics, migration, and so forth. This also created an opportunity for some of us to meet and start working on an idea that we were passionate about. For the past decade or even more, some of the local artists from the play have been staging street dramas in the villages of Karnali and laying foundations to the possibilities of opening an arts centre there.
Our Value and Goals
We envision a culturally vibrant and engaged community of arts enthusiasts and practitioners collaborating with the community in preserving, promoting, and making culture a part of our livelihoods. Eventually, we want Karnali Arts Centre to become a cultural hub for learning and practicing various forms of arts and informing the next generation of Karnali and the world to love the richness of their culture.
We value the intrinsic worth of every individual, and the humanity and culture engrained in their lives.an informed and engaged community exercising their rights to culture.the ownership of the community towards their knowledge systems.
We aim to document, archive, and curate various tangible and intangible cultural heritages of the Karnali region like their stories, songs, architecture, and so on.build an environment where the community can actively engage in the promotion of arts and culture of the Karnali region by conducting various events and festivals.develop the skills of local artists in the Karnali region by conducting arts related workshops, trainings, and residencies.