Guru Gedera Festival

John Keells Foundation undertook a 3-year primary sponsorship of the Gratien Trust. An agreement was signed between John Keells Foundation (JKF) and the Gratiaen Trust (GT) on 14th October by signatories, Dilani Alagaratnam- President Group HR, Legal and CSR and Seanika Pulle – Director Keells Consultants (Pvt) Limited on behalf of JKF and Neloufer de Mel, Chairperson of GT and 5 other Trustees of GT.

Founded by Michael Ondaatje in 1992 with the prize money for his Booker award-winning novel `The English Patient’, GT’s primary objective is to recognize and promote Sri Lankan writing in English, and translations of Sinhala and Tamil literature into English, specifically nurturing Sri Lankan authors resident in Sri Lanka. This collaboration falls within JKF’s focus area of Arts & Culture aimed at nurturing the livelihoods of artists to preserve our cultural heritage towards safeguarding and promoting Sri Lankan arts and culture.

Under the Arts & Culture focus area, JKF also has ongoing collaborations with The George Keyt Foundation in organizing and hosting the annual Kala Pola – an annual open air art fair now in its 26th year, the Chitrasena Vajira Dance Foundation as primary sponsor of the Guru Gedara Festival and the Sunera Foundation while substantive investment has been pledged to the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Sri Lanka which is due to be launched in December 2019.