Straight from the Heart!
A Few Words from Our President on the eve of the Tenth Anniversary

December 14, 1996, on a rainy day, Dakshinachitra opened its doors to the public. We’ve come along way since then. Those were the days of no tree cover, only sand for pathways and a center struggling to be built. I remember the euphoria all of us had when we opened. We were a small core group guiding those early activities. Gita Ram, Visalakshi Ramasamy, Geeta Vasudevan, Maureen Murari, Kausalya Jagmohan, V.R. Devika and our active board members, M.V. Subbiah, Malcolm Adishehiah, Indira Kothari, and S.L. Rao, among others. The construction was going on full swing. Laurie Baker was the mastermind and my guru. P.T. Krishnan was prominent among those who helped answer all the riddles that construction brings; and finally, Benny Kuriakose came to help along with his team of masons and carpenters trained in the Laurie Baker style. Benny, with his intimate technical knowledge of traditional construction and his architectural know-how got us moving so we could finally open our doors.

Phew!!!. We all felt great; Twelve years of preparation, documentation, school programs, object collections, fundraising and building had gone into this day. The next morning was something else. I woke up with the realization that building was only a part of the job and we now had to run and program the center for the public six days a week, 52 weeks in a year. We had a vision for our educational and academic programs as well as how we wanted to help and promote both craftspeople and folk performing artists, and create awareness about the importance of our architectural heritage. We needed staff and it was clear that except for myself everyone else had too many outside commitments to work on this 24/7.

So in 1997 the real work began. Staff was hired and immense efforts went into training. Charles, our present Admin Manager at DakshinaChitra was already on board, and much credit goes to him and his team for the well managed center you see today. Vikrim Parchure,a J. Krishnamurty educator and NID designer, who was the director for the year, laid the groundwork for our education programs along with V.R.Devika, and craft development activities. That first year was a year of transition. Our new staff interacted closely with our volunteer/colleagues who led and shared their vision : Gita Ram with Shanta Guhan for the craftshop; Visalakshi Ramasamy for our food service and nearly single handedly for our exhibitions; Maureen Murari for publicity and public relations, including founding our now 150 member strong Friends of Dakshinachitra, and Geeta Vasudevan who worked out the interface with Tourism bodies and corporates to bring special group and corporate programs to the center. I was the overall conductor with special responsibilities for academic work and curation, fundraising and construction Everyone together, of which many more should be mentioned, got together to fashion and create spectacular events and special evening dinner and program experiences.

However, we had one major problem. We didn’t really understand the role of the media or how to communicate what we were doing to bring in people. Our friends came and a few others who heard about us through word of mouth. We knew we had a major role to play in education for children, and we knew that, if they knew about us many more people would come, but how would we make this happen. Over the next years we learned how to do it, through the help of the PR firm, Prism. We learned to plan ahead and how to interact with the media. Here we are today, in 2006, with a record 94,000 visitors last year, and a 12% increase in visitors this year so far over last year. Nearly one third of our visitors are children and students. We are particularly pleased that both Chennai and Madras have accepted us as one of their own. We are proud of the large number of craftspeople who have taken advantage of our marketing outlet at our crafts bazaar and our marketing through our craftshop. We note with pleasure the large number of craft workshops that have opened up in the city, where many of the owners were participants in our craft workshops. We empathize with the many talented folk performing groups who have performed at Dakshinachitra, and are happy to note that many have substantially more programs today than before. We look back with pride on our major international seminars, our village outreach programs, our new Arts Management Internship diploma program now in its second year , our education programs, architectural and craft workshops, and on our budding foray into contemporary art with artists camps and exhibitions in our Art Gallery.

A 10th Anniversary is a time to look ahead and a time to reevaluate our vision and plans for the future. Our collaborative projects have been extremely fruitful and we look forward to many more collaborative efforts with other organizations, on both programs and seminars. Culture has never been static and DakshinaChitra’s programs reflect that.

We need all of our readers support to help us to meet the challenge of raising funds for the future, both so that we can continue to offer you and the public exciting programs as well as carry out the building projects needed both to meet our infrastructure demands as well as to finish our Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh sections. Most of all we hope you will feel part of the DakshinaChitra family and will be our ambassadors for DakschinaChitra. We have pleasure in bringing you news of our programs for November and December. Deborah Thiagarajan