Tourism Dept all set to launch ‘FestivalWiki’

R Ayyappan
First Published : 20 May 2009 12:36:00 AM IST


THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Tourism Department is all set to launch the biggest-ever participatory exercise in tourism promotion. It has developed a collaborative Wikipedialike Internet tool, ‘FestivalWiki’, to create an all-encompassing database of state festivals.
People can log into FestivalWiki and upload information and photographs of obscure, generally unknown, festivals or edit or add to festival information already posted on the site. FestivalWiki, which will be linked to the state tourism website, will be open to the public by May end, after the restrictions related to the election code of conduct are lifted. Only festival literature and photographs can be uploaded on Festival- Wiki.
For videos, YouTube should be used.
“Since the state tourism is one of You- Tube’s content partners, the festival videos uploaded on the video-sharing site through the Kerala Tourism website gets featured regularly on its international homepage. Also there will be no time-limit for these videos,” said Hari of Invis Multimedia, the firm that supports the Department’s internet strategy. YouTube has already hosted a state-specific travel-video festival.
“As of now, we have a very limited festival calendar, information of about some 80-100 festivals. Even this information is general, and not locally generated.
Without local involvement, it is hard to spell out the nitty-gritties of a festival,” said Hari.
Take Thrissur Pooram, for instance.
There are many things about the pooram the world is unaware of; like the complicated astrological considerations that decide the time of the various events, like the repeat ‘pakalpooram’ that takes place without the crowds the day after the first and the much televised one. “Only the locals know this and only they can provide us with accurate information. We too provide such details but these are done with disclaimers,” Hari said.
Then there are relatively unknown festivals, ritual art forms and the like, that have not found a place on the websites and tourism guides. There is general information on about 100 festivals but in reality there are more than thousand infinitely more interesting ones waiting to be discovered. There is a small Devi temple in a relatively unknown village called Thaanikkudam, some 40-50 kilometres north of Thrissur.
In this temple the ‘aarattu’ takes place only when the Nila river swells in the rain, rises and passes through it.
Last year, processions were taken out of the Thaanikkudam temple thrice. The year before last, the Nila did not rise and there was none.”The FestivalWiki, we hope, will lead to the discovery of more such poignant and exotic festivals,” said Hari.
FestivalWiki will have basic information of about 100-odd festivals. People can log in and upload new information or edit existing content. “The festival season begins by August and reaches a peak in November. By that time, we hope the collaborative effort will result in a rich database,” Sivasankar said. “If this turns out successful, we will extend the concept to destinations,” he added.