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Center for the Arts

The Center for Arts is now the only institution that combines training in the arts with the production of high quality art objects. The skills preserved and passed on at Norbulingka include statue making, thangka painting, applique and tailoring, woodcarving and carpentry and metal craft. The masters teaching these arts are true artists intent primarily on preserving their heritage and passing it on to new generation of artists. The Norbulingka Institute is particularly concerned to make high quality works of art available to the public. This is part of an effort to increase appreciation and awareness of the excellence of Tibetan art among both Tibetan and foreign patrons and collectors.

Administration and Marketing

The Center for Arts alone employs nearly two hundred people, including an administrative staffs that looks after production, sales and marketing and accounting. Sales of crafts account for the entire income of the Center for Arts, which is self sufficient. We are proud to be able to employ many young people recently arrived from Tibet, who have acquired their skills working for the Norbulingka. We hope that the continued success of our products will allow us to expand in the future, employing and training more people in need and supporting the Institute's other projects.

Academy of Tibetan Culture

October 1997 saw the opening of the Academy of Tibetan Culture, a crucial aspect of Norbulingka's effort to promote and preserve Tibetan culture. Twenty-four students, twenty men and four women, were carefully selected for six year course of higher education in traditional Tibetan studies. This will include philosophy, poetry and literature, and English, world history, art history, and relevant contemporary studies. A new group of students will be enrolled every two years. The aim of the Academy is to provide capable young Tibetans with the opportunity to develop a sound knowledge of their cultural heritage and the ability to place it in a global context. Such young people will be qualified to serve as Tibet's teachers, writers and administrators in the future. We urgently need funds to purchase books and other facilities, and to expand the existing hostel, which is barely adequate for the present group of students.

Library

The Norbulingka Library is situated on the second floor of the Temple, and serves the needs of the students, researchers and visitors. It presently contains about one thousand volumes in Tibetans. Efforts are afoot to raise funds necessary to increase the number of reference works both in English and Tibetan. There are also plans to install a multimedia reference library.

Literary and Cultural Research Centre

Since the great upheaval that overwhelmed Tibet in the middle of this century, a literary tradition that evolved and been influential throughout Central Asia for centuries was suddenly brought to a halt. Although many great scholars perished and literary works were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, it is not yet too late to revive this once great tradition. Many volumes of the collected works of the great Tibetan Scholars of the past are preserved in the libraries around the world. However, it has now become essential to preserve the living tradition of Tibetan literature as a means for Tibetan people to continue to express them. This can only be done by encouraging and publishing the work of young writers.

Our Research Centre began its work in June 1997, with a team of ten young writers and researchers preparing a wide range of material for publication. Projects include publication of a regular cultural newspaper and a separate journal. Research has begun on a three-year project to produce a Tibetan encyclopaedia. This proposed three-volume work would be brought out both in Tibetan and in English, and on CD-ROM. As funds become available, we hope to take on more writers and extend the scope of our publications to include notable Tibetan biographies and childrenāsā books.

Tibetan Publications include Nor-de, a monthly eight page cultural newspaper, and Nor-dzue, a bi- annual volume collecting together essays on cultural topics. Our team of writers has a backlog of significant scholarly works virtually ready for publication. We hope to bring them out, as funds become available.

English Publications include Cho-Yang, an acclaimed illustrated magazine, that features original material on Tibetan culture, and Melong, the newsletter of the Norbuliongka Institute that also features shorter articles on Tibetan cultural issues