There is a serious lack of knowledge dissemination from Colombo to other geographical centers. It is obvious through the artist community in Colombo that there is a considerable accumulation of knowledge on visual and performing art fields in Colombo. However this knowledge does not visibly seen as disseminated to outer regions.  Due to Colombo being the capital and its availability of facilitates and opportunities there has been a large human resource shift from regional areas towards Colombo in the form of people coming for their education and professional aspirations and career development.  This is most visible in the larger percentage of students in the university level education centres who come from regional areas. In majority of the cases after getting the education the tendency of them is to stay in Colombo preventing the acquired knowledge of these people being disseminated back to the areas they came from. If one looks at the visual artists who are at present working in Colombo, almost 99% are not from Colombo. At the same time, there is little or no visual art activities happening in areas outside Colombo and there is no channel for any new knowledge to reach these areas. Because there is no facilities and conducive environments in art in the regional areas there is no incentive for the artists to go back to their towns or villages to do their art practices.  As a possible intervention to reverse this situation where art information flow is redirected towards regional areas from urban centers Theertha has invested its energy on identifying key people who are active in different communities and supporting them establish artists led initiatives to do art activities in their own areas.

Theertha has been successful in establishing links with the regional artists to initiate workshops, training programs and art exhibitions to address this situation even in a small way.  2006 also saw a major development in group dynamics from areas that Theertha have had art programs particularly the Art Teacher Training Programs (LINK).  While the first group to  emerge  was Nadee (in 2005), a group from Dehiatta Kandiya. It was followed by Bhumi in Kandy, Rala in Matara, Mini in Ratnapura, Gaveshi in Aludeniya and Megha in Colombo. The main support base for these groups came from the art teacher communities in these areas.  The groups were encouraged by Theertha and given directions in publishing their own newsletters which also addressed the local art issues and art curriculum in schools.  The groups have formed into a local network collaborating on activities and exchange of knowledge.  Theertha hopes to see more of these satellite groups coming up to expand the local artists’ network.  

In addition, Theertha has built a long standing and very strong partnership with Jaffna  artists group SETHU Site for Visual Culture where number of extremely interesting and culturally/ politically relevant projects such as ‘Aham Purm’ (Link)(exhibition of South art in the Jaffna Library- 2004) and Tamil publications of cultural journal ‘Panuwal’/ art journal ‘Art Lab’ were done and others on going.  Similarly Colombo Institute (Link)  for the Advanced Study of Society & Culture (Colombo Institute) has collaborated on number of publications such as the cultural journal ‘Patitha’ in the past. Other seminal cultural publications at present are being carried out by them.  
Publications carried out by the local network partners:
 

Local Artists network partners:

Nadee Art Centre
Gaveshi Art Resource Centre
Megha Artists Group
Rala Artists Group
Mini Artists Group
ArtLab
Colombo Institute for the Advanced Study of Society & Culture (Colombo Institute)
SETHU