• Santhagaraya founder Gayantha Pandula on why he wanted to establish a cultural space in Gampaha

The arts play an important role in individual and social wellbeing, reflecting thoughts, ideas, and beliefs and bridging gaps between different communities. However, it is fair to say that Sri Lanka lacks spaces where one can gain exposure to the arts, especially without the influence or pressures of certain ideologies or schools of thought. Santhagaraya, located in Mirigama, Gampaha and opened in March 2020, is attempting to change this as an independent centre dedicated to Sri Lanka’s arts and culture.

Its founder Gayantha Pandula, is a teacher of science and technology, and isn’t involved in the arts professionally. However, he grew up exposed to the arts and, identifying a lack of cultural spaces, especially outside Colombo, Gayantha converted a family-owned building into a library and cultural space. Gayantha’s vision for the space involves the addition of a gallery as well as an outdoor theatre. This, he said, would give people not just in Gampaha, but across the island, the opportunity to experience and appreciate the country’s arts and culture.

In conversation with The Daily Morning, Gayantha went into detail about the importance of culture and why it was important to him that Santhagaraya remained independent.

Following are excerpts from the interview:

Tell us about the team behind Santhagaraya.

I am its founder, and we have connected with various people when carrying out our work. I would like to mention three by name. When we were starting Santhagaraya, someone who basically played the role of co-founder was Manjula Wijesuriya. Unfortunately, he passed away during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Buddhika Jayaweera and Didula Weerasekara work closely with me and our team comprises a few others.

What led to the establishment of Santhagaraya?

Cultural centres in Sri Lanka tend to operate in and around the capital city and are mainly managed by the State sector or embassies. This lack of cultural centres that operate outside Colombo is what led us to establish Santhagaraya. We began with a small collection of books in Mirigama, Gampaha, with a few known people gathering to hold discussions about topics related to the arts and culture.

We don’t have many spaces for the enrichment of our cultural lives outside Colombo. The centres we do have tend to work within a certain ideology. But I wanted to establish a cultural centre that worked independently, without any one ideology at the forefront, instead giving a space for all thoughts and attracting all people.

Sri Lanka lacks independent spaces where people can read about arts and culture and study-related topics. It is in addressing this deficit that Santhagaraya came to be. One of our aims is to hold various programmes and bring together experts and organisations.

Physical spaces come with the need for investment and maintenance. How did you accept this challenge as a small group?

That is a problem. I had a personally-owned property; two shops by a road that were shut down. My wife owned these two shops and we were wondering what to do with this space. I had a personal library and had no place to keep these books. We started with a small library, and soon, a few known people started visiting the space, so we held some workshops.

Up to now, it is through my personal contributions that this is being done. We don’t have an issue with the place since we own it. When we hold programmes, we handle the expenses among us. And we haven’t had to rely on funding or contributions from any individuals or organisations thus far. We have borne the expenses ourselves.

Do you think this helped in maintaining that independence and freedom from ideologies that you wanted?

Definitely. This is the main reason we do things this way.

This is an issue in Sri Lanka. When we connect with an organisation or corporate entity, they push their own ideology or agenda and we must work accordingly. But we have our own goals and objectives and what we expect out of this. As an example, we want to spark discourse on the arts in Sri Lanka and feel this is an honest goal. But when there are other agendas and ideologies, we miss our own goals.

It is to prevent this that we want to maintain an independent space within our means. There are a few people we have connected with who have made donations on the basis of the relationship we have with them. However, besides this, we haven’t taken any funding; the reason being that independence we want is to work within.

When it comes to Sinhala arts in Sri Lanka, we have seen how some centres or institutions are unable to achieve their own objectives due to interference from investors or partners. So, for now, we don’t want to depend on others.

Doing something like this by yourself is not an easy task, and yet, at present and going forward, we plan on managing Santhagaraya without the influence of others.

How has Santhagaraya helped boost cultural exposure in Gampaha?

There are cultural centres in Colombo that have long since attracted the higher classes of Colombo society. For the Sinhala-speaking middle class also, there are cultural centres in Colombo. However, in our experience, there aren’t many cultural spaces outside Colombo. There are only a handful and many of these are fully or partially State-managed.

Gampaha, despite its proximity to Colombo, is culturally distant from the capital. The cultural experiences that you get living close to the capital can be made accessible to people living in Gampaha through spaces like Santhagaraya.

However, it doesn’t only benefit the people of Gampaha. There is a literary collection here, which is still at a very basic level. If you take a writer like Mahagama Sekara, a complete collection of his works cannot be found in one place in Sri Lanka. If someone wants to study Sekara, from the start of his career to the end, there is no comprehensive collection they can access.

At Santhanagaraya, we have started a Sekara collection, a Dayananda Gunawardena collection. We are compiling collections of the work of people who greatly influenced Sri Lanka’s arts and culture. Places where people can access such subject-related information isn’t lacking in just Gampaha but the entire country, so I think our efforts will be important not only for the region but Sri Lanka as a whole.

What, in your opinion, are the reasons behind the lack of initiatives to preserve our culture in this way?

The reason for this, I believe, is that our education system doesn’t teach us what a cultural life is and why it is important to a person. This is regardless of our professions or the subject stream we study.

In Sri Lanka, there is this mindset that the opposite of science is art. However, the opposite of science (‘widyawa’) is ignorance (‘awidyawa’). From selecting subjects in school and higher education choices to the careers we ultimately follow, we forget our cultural life. There is this belief that the arts are for artists only.

However, within our education system, even those who study arts subjects lack knowledge about a cultural life. They haven’t been taught this and our society is not used to or familiar with a cultural life. With the sociopolitical changes that occurred in the past 40 or 50 years, I think this is something we keep losing even more.

Close to Independence, the British fostered such a culture, appreciating and immersing oneself in the arts. But we slowly lost touch of it and more recently, it has centred on the capital and really waned off. We haven’t been taught why a cultural life is important.

Why is a cultural life important to anyone, not just artists?

It is our wellbeing that we think most of, whether it is through materialistic things or education. But for our wellbeing, a cultural life is essential. Arts and cultural knowledge are musts. This is something accepted across the various rules or laws that have been accepted globally.

Any developed human must have some idea about arts and culture. This is because the existence of a person is determined by their aesthetic wishes and hopes, which contribute towards the person’s imagination and development. Simply put, it is said that if people’s enjoyment improves, their problems are solved, whether financial, social, or political.

If you look at the problems Sri Lankan society faces, it boils down to this. A person who can enjoy and appreciate a cultural life will be equipped to face financial and social problems. It is within this cultural life that we get to see the world. It is through this knowledge that we can go forward. That’s where all goals or intentions are born.

For the development and advancement of man, a cultural life is definitely needed. If you take France as an example, you will see audiences enjoy the opera for hours, not saying a word during this time. This is the level of appreciation for the arts. The situation is different in Sri Lanka. Due to this lack of advanced social thinking, we don’t have this discipline, which is fostered by our cultural environment.

What kind of programmes or projects does Santhagaraya have planned as a cultural space?

Firstly, our hope is to establish Santhagaraya as an independent library housing collections that are of importance in Sri Lanka’s arts and culture, from publications to videos, audio-visual material, and photographs. We want to preserve these collections and have already started our work.

We currently hold a monthly workshop for children and adults, but plan on expanding these efforts, covering literature, theatre, performance art, visual art, and so on.

Our next goal is to have an outdoor theatre, which is currently under construction. We plan on naming it after the late Dayananda Gunawardena. We want to provide facilities so that someone studying theatre, for instance, can browse publications and other material on the relevant topics in our library and then have a more practical experience in our theatre.

We also have a collection of visual art, having received works from various artists in the country. We hope to open a small gallery in our space. We also want to increase our members in the area, but also giving people across the island the opportunity to connect with us.

Our main need right now is books, publications, and such resources, since we are dedicated to compiling and preserving material that is of importance in Sri Lanka’s arts and cultural space. We would also like to invite people working in the arts or with an appreciation for it to connect with us and support our endeavour.