an agreement signed by the Ministry of Culture through the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arets (IGNCA) and Jodhpur base folklore institute “ Rupayan Sansthan”
Jodhpur. Under the Ministry of Culture,GoI,the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA),today signed a memorandum of agreement for a pilot project with Jodhpur base folklore Institute’Rupayan Sanasthan” to set up the National Cultural Audio-visual Archives. This agreement was signed in Jodhpur in the presence of Mrs Depali Khanna,Member Secretary of Cultural Ministry of GoI.On Behalf of IGNCA,Mr P Jha ,Project Director and Mr Kuldeep Kothari on behalf of Rupayan sansthan signed the agreement.
Mr kuldeep Kothari,Secretary of the Rupayan Sansthan said that Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts has identified Rupayan Sansthan as an partnering institution to achieve the ambitious task of the creation of a state-of-the-art digital audiovisual repository and secured dissemination of content sourced from multiple Partnering Institutions .It is envisaged to achieve the targets of digitizing and making 10,000 hours of digital audio & video accessible by 31st March 2017. The Project Management Unit at IGNCA is being guided by a duly constituted Steering Committee of experts from the field of audiovisual archiving.
According to the agreement the objective of this project is to create digital archives of international standards through IGNCA and its partnering and collaborating Institutions. He added that in the current phase of the project i.e. up to 31 March,2017,it is envisaged to device a scheme of standards (digitization and Metadata),carryout digitization, provide access to an estimated 10000 hours of audio visual material and build capacity in the domain of audio visual archiving.
Under the project, main focus would be to Identifying and preserving the cultural heritage of India available in audiovisual form in governmental and non-governmental institutions across the country through a process of digitization and making the material accessible in the public domain. A large volume of Indian’s cultural wealth created in 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 that 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.”Thus preservation becomes critical.”
The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) recognized the Rupayan sansthan,s wealth of cultural audiovisual material, which was result of painstaking field work carried out over a period sixty years.Rupayan Sansthan was established in 1960 by reputed ethnomusicologist and folklorist-Padmabhushan late Komal Kothari and his friend ,folk story teller and writer Padma shri Vijaydan Detha with the idea of collecting folktales and folksongs to bring out the richness of Rajasthan cultutural heritage.The organization furthered these objectives by way of carrying out archival and research work in many diverse fields base on folk culture.
Kalyan Singh Kothari