Cinnamon Colomboscope, a festival of art

• Exploring art, culture and the environment

 Cinnamon Colomboscope is the only multidisciplinary arts festival of its kind in Sri Lanka, annually attracting a growing audience of media, travellers, art lovers, collectors, artistes and the general public to celebrate and witness some of the best contemporary arts seen in Colombo. 

The upcoming edition of the festival will be presented by Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts for the third year running, in collaboration with EUNIC Sri Lanka (Goethe-Institut, British Council and Alliance Française de Kotte) who are the original founders of the festival, and the John Keells Foundation along with state patronage extended through Sri Lanka Tourism. 

Themed Re/Evolution, the festival will bring the ongoing environmental crisis under the spotlight, in the hope of using the arts to inspire new ways of thinking and living in response to the situation. Cinnamon Colomboscope will be held at the former Colombo Terminus Railway Station in Maradana, rendering an unconventional viewpoint into metropolitan Colombo and her history along with the arts. 

The key attraction of the festival is the arts exhibition; the 2017 showcase will feature an impressive mix of artistes from local and international backgrounds, whose work combine art with technology and new media. While the festival will present over fifty artistes from Sri Lanka including respected names in the local art community such as K. Thabendran, Kesara Ratnavibushana and the CoCA Collective, there is also a fantastic line-up of emerging and previously undiscovered talent in visual, performance art, video installations, films, interactive art, photography and sound installations.  Meanwhile, the international artistes hosted at Cinnamon Colomboscope include Ackroyd and Harvey from the UK, Eva Horn and Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky from Germany, Benoit Billotte and Karine Bonnewal from France and Elmas Deniz from Turkey along with several more from Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, India and Bangladesh. 

With education and awareness being the central goal of the event, the programme also includes talks on waste management, conscious consumerism, deforestation and development, organic food produce and green technology. The popular talks by international and local artists on their work and process will also be part of the talk series. 

Taking into consideration the importance of engaging the younger generation, education and outreach programmes for children facilitated by Mind Adventures Theatre Co and Iridescence, plus a workshop programme for kids powered by the British Council Colombo, are also scheduled as components of the festival experience. This exciting and thought-provoking program has been curated by a Sri Lankan team for the first time in the history of the festival, led by the chief curator Menika van der Pooten.

Cinnamon Colomboscope 2017 edition will take place as six days of curated visual and performing arts, between 2 and 7 September, unfolding around a powerful theme that celebrates the arts and its capacity to influence our culture with the evolution of a more meaningful human life on earth. 

For more information visit www.cinnamoncolomboscope.com

Cinnamon Colomboscope 2017 is organised by Cinnamon Hotels & Resorts and is conceptualised by EUNIC Sri Lanka comprising of the British Council, Goethe-Institut and Alliance Française de Kotte. The festival is in association the John Keells Foundation, Cinnamon Life and is supported by the Embassy of Switzerland, Embassy of the Netherlands and the Turkish Embassy. The Art magazine partner for Cinnamon Colomboscope 2017 is Artra.