(A)   ‘Ape Game…’ (In our village…) :

Ape Game …. community project will be used as the mechanism to evolve the community to do research of cultural and historical heritage in each selected area. It will also channel the community energy to preserve and manage and also value the heritage as collective responsibility. This would also emphasis that irrespective of which ethnic/ religious root reflects these cultural and historical property it is nevertheless be viewed as part of  overall Sri Lankan heritage and therefore it is the collective responsibility of the immediate community to preserve and respect it.

Working method

1. The project will involve youth and adults. It will first identify a number of three-wheel drivers who will function as the main communicators and the linking-persons between the artists and the interested individuals and their families. The project also intends to work with art students and A/L & O/L school children, their parents and teachers and their families and other who are interested.

2. Each selected three-wheel will carry a very simple questionnaire which the three-wheel drivers will request their clients to fill in or request them to post it to the Theertha office or give it to the anchor person in the area working on the Ape Patte project.

The questionnaire will have the following 7 simple questions:

1.    What are the most important historical places/ structures in your neighborhood which you think is not taken care of?

2.    What is your most favorite contemporary cultural place in the area?

3.    What are the historical / religious buildings that exist in your community that are different to your religion or ethnic group.

4.    What is the most beautiful place in your neighborhood?

5.    What is the ugliest area in your neighborhood

6.    What is it that you like most about your area?

7.    What is it that you don’t like most about your area?

8.    Do you like to be an artist?

Note: These questions in a way are very simple but in this project we consider the relationship between a question and a reply as a process of creating a sense of risk, possibility, responsibility and uncertainty. The first four questions will, in a very subtle manner prompt the person who tries to answer them to assess their relationship to the environment in which they have lived for years. We hope that this will give rise to a discursive process of defining ones presence in relation to the particular village/ town environment of that particular individual and her/his family. The fifth question, which is a more challenging one, we hope, will open the person who tries to answer it to the complex issues of identity and subjectivity at a deeper level. However at another level it will also raise questions pertaining to the definitions of the term ‘artist’, ‘art works’ and ‘art activities’ since from the very outset it is made clear that this is an art project.

3. When the filled in questionnaires come to the Theertha anchor person in the area)  the theertha team working on the project  will arrange meetings and discussion sessions, heritage management and art workshops with those who responded along with their families and the three-wheel drivers and organize discussion sessions and art workshops with the interested adults and children. The things they have mentioned in the questionnaire will work as starting points for these discussions and art workshops. These meeting will result in encouraging children and parents to collect information on history, historical buildings, contemporary cultural markers that have large significance in their daily life, folk stories, myths etc specific to the area they live in.  These information will be discussed in the workshops and reinterpreted within a multicultural and multi ethnic reading of history.  By doing this it is hoped that they will develop culturally enriching relationships with village environment and the seniors of the village and to accept the heritage as a multi influenced entity.

Finale results of the project would be

1. Having billboards or shop fronts ( other visible public surfaces)  with slogans/ statements addressing cultural issues of the area with images of children and/or respected adults of the area.

Note: Billboards, as in any urban situation  are an ubiquitous item in Sri Lanka with domineering visual statements that gives off falls and meaningless promises of consumerism. Since the culture of billboards is here to stay and that it has been effective in achieving what it sets out to do we thought it is prudent to use the same technique to re-enact what the commercially driven billboards are intending to dismantle: the potential for collective actions within a community.

2. Leaflets and posters designed by children and parents with the help of artists on issues pertaining to environment and culture of the area.

Note: Leaflets and posters are another kind of effective communication method popularly used by Sri Lankans in various occasions. From funerals to political rallies, Sri Lankans have the habit of distributing posters and leaflets to share information with their communities. In this project we would be using this method of communication to share information pertaining to the project with the larger community. Since the authorship of these leaflets and posters are with the adults and children from the area they will, we hope, add an artist-dimension to the area and the messages in them will be received with a sense of familiarity.  

3. A signage system for bus-stands, food stalls and vegetable stalls in the area that would proclaim an interest in environment and culture preservation.

Note: The connectedness that the billboards, the leaflets and the posters would create in the area amongst its inhabitants will be further consolidated by way of the above signage system. Here also adults and children from the area will play the main role from designing to the distribution of the signs.

4. Production of cultural maps of the area.

Note: It is my general impression that Sri Lankans are generally not very savvy with maps. Making maps of ones own village marking important heritage buildings, contemporary cultural markers, religious places and other culturally  important  places etc will definitely be a new experience to the participants of the workshops. Since making a map is a means to enforce a certain order and an authority over an area the cultural maps that we intend to make in this project will give rise to a unique sense of attachment, understanding and ownership of the area. These maps will also be distributed among the larger community of the area.