The Union Culture Ministry will set up a National Cultural Audio-Visual Archives here to identify and preserve the cultural heritage of India.
A memorandum of agreement for a pilot project was signed here on Friday between the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) under the Ministry of Culture and Rupayan Sansthan.
It is envisaged to achieve the targets of digitising and making 10,000 hours of digital audio and video accessible by March 31, 2017. The Project Management Unit at the IGNCA is being guided by a committee of experts from the field of audio-visual archiving.
According to Kuldeep Kothari, secretary of Rupayan Sansthan, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts has identified the Sansthan as a partnering institution to achieve the ambitious task of creation of a state-of-the-art digital audio-visual repository and dissemination of content sourced from multiple partnering institutions.
The objective of this project is to create digital archives of international standards through IGNCA and its partnering and collaborating institutions. The current phase of the project is up to March 31, 2017 and it is envisaged to devise a scheme of standards (digitisation and metadata), carry out digitisation, provide access to an estimated 10,000 hours of audio-visual material and build capacity in the domain of audio-visual archiving.
Under the project, main focus would be on identifying and preserving the cultural heritage of India available in audio-visual form in governmental and non-governmental institutions across the country through digitisation and making the material accessible in the public domain.
A large volume of Indian’s cultural wealth created in the last six decades is stored in audio-visual form with various government and non-governmental institutions and private collection. The content of these holdings enshrines the creativity of some of India’s greatest artistic talents. This invaluable national heritage needs to be preserved for all time and made accessible to the citizens of the country. In the absence of systematic preservation technologies, lack of awareness and proper upkeep as well as the fragility of the medium they are stored in, these materials are in imminent danger of being lost forever.
Rupayan Sansthan was established in 1960 by ethno-musicologist and folk artist late Komal Kothari and his friend, folk storyteller and writer Vijaydan Detha with the idea of collecting folk tales and folk songs to bring out the richness of Rajasthan.
