Sir,

The year gone by will not be forgotten for a long time to come. A year that turned the world upside down. Travel and hospitality sectors which provide most employment were crippled beyond belief. The pandemic has changed the very nature of tourism and travel for ever. Their worlds will never be the same again. Words like hybrid and virtual have come in to the lexicon of tourism. This is the new reality.

Monuments, cultural heritage sites and famous museums across the world have gone ‘hybrid’ to provide online guided tours through their sites and galleries to millions who are unable to travel anymore. In India, Government has announced that many of the country’s UNESCO Cultural Heritage sites and major museums will prepare to provide online access.

Technology not only makes this possible but has opened the magical doors to the creation of virtual museums that are only limited by imagination!

In this brave new world, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)  — www.indiaifa.org  — has come forward to invite proposals from multi-disciplinary teams for the creation of a Virtual Museum to showcase Kodava Heritage and Culture. The virtual museum will be an interactive online space for the rich and thriving heritage of Kodavas offering a glimpse into their history, customs and cultural practices. IFA has an enviable record of supporting path-breaking initiatives in the field of art and culture.

The exciting prospect of this museum of cultural heritage of a proud warrior people has  become possible by a CSR grant from Recaero India Pvt. Ltd., which is a pioneer in the field of aerospace engineering. This grant will clearly need to be supplemented with generous donations as the project progresses.

For a project of this kind to be successful, we need to access tangible resources like photographs, video clips of marriages, folk dances and observance of rituals, jewellery and objects which are unique to the Kodava way of life. The design team would also require to reach out to members of the community for intangible resources like accounts of social rituals and customs of Kodavas that may have been lost in antiquity. We, therefore, request  members of the community to volunteer to provide the resource requirement and any other support.

The Project Coordinator in IFA Darshana can be reached at: [email protected]. I can be reached on: [email protected]

— Rathi Vinay Jha, Chair, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA)

Bengaluru

29.4.2021