Getting hands on with Tamil history and heritage
Coventry based potter Vithu Karunakaran and PhD researcher Shavena Vigneswara Kumar came together to collaborate on a creative workshop series exploring history and heritage with members of the University of Warwick Tamil students’ society. Vithu and Shavena’s partnership emerged through conversations around their shared sense of diasporic identity and heritage connected to the Tamil homelands in the North and East of Sri Lanka. They recognise the complexity of relationships to pasts and practices and the diverging experience tied up with the Tamil diaspora. They are invested in bringing together their expertise, Vithu in clay craft, and Shavena’s experience as a creative facilitator and researcher, to build spaces that enable deep reflection and processing of lived experiences, family and community histories and heritage practices.
The 2-part workshop took place in February 2025 with the first session focussing on introducing the project and aims, initial reflective discussions on the themes and working on individual pieces. Participants were shown different techniques to hand build traditional oil lamps, called Vilakku, the design however, was up to them. This was a chance for the participants, most of whom had not worked with clay before, to get stuck in and shape pieces with their own individual flair. During the second session participants injected colour into their pieces using glaze. Parallel to working on their own pieces, Vithu brought in a traditional style pot, Kudam, he had spun for the group to each add motifs to which formed a collective piece. These motifs were carved onto the outside surface of the pot and participants were given the prompt of thinking of something that represented their relationship to Tamil history and/or heritage.
The sessions provided opportunity to explore what university-community collaboration could look like. Shavena’s positionality as a PhD researcher and community organiser means she has one foot and both worlds and is invested in thinking about what equitable interactions across these spaces look like. Vithu is keen to share his craft and expertise in community settings and promote the value of traditional crafts and arts practice. Building on the legacy of grassroots community initiatives set up by Tamil diaspora in the UK, their partnership enables a reimagining of praxis with accessibility, creativity and social action at its heart.
As they look to build the project going forward, Shavena and Vithu look to further explore these models of workshops with different community groups. Guided by participatory, creative approaches having seen the valuable ways conversations around identity and heritage are opened. By continuing this initiative, they look to expand the reach and impact through providing crucial space for reflection, processing and interpreting relationships to identity, history and heritage. Thus, further exploring sense of being and belonging with Tamil diaspora communities in the UK.