Kurdish Heritage Institute, Silêmanî
The Kurdish Heritage Institute (KHI) is a cultural center founded in 2003 to host an archive of Kurdish oral culture. It is currently collecting, preserving, and developing the oral culture of all peoples of Kurdistan, including ethnic and religious minorities and all who have a shared history with Kurds.
The KHI has two main offices, one in Silêmanî and one in Duhok, with representatives in Kirkuk and in Syria, Turkey, and Iran.
In 2014 the KHI in Silêmanî acquired a new building, with new technology to accommodate the preservation of arts and culture
Its new concert hall seats 300 for performances and film screenings, equipped with Blu-Ray technology and a SurroundSound system. Performances can be recorded in a control room.
It has two audio recording studios, for both digital and analog instruments. For its oral culture archive, it collects sound, vision, text, registers them in a database, and digitally preserves them.
You can hear some of its recordings on SoundCloud. The facility is also equipped to produce CDs and DVDs for distribution
The library is home to over 15,000 books on Kurdish culture, as well as documents, manuscripts, and photographs, making it an important source for research.
The KHI also has a publishing arm—it has published hundreds of books and organizes book fairs to publicize and distribute them.
It organizes special events for respected artists and it arranges cultural forums and seminars in other cities, as well as cultural festivals and concerts.
It produces documentaries introduce people of other nations to Kurdish culture and to connect the current Kurdish generation with past generations.
Its website alone is full of archival information, as well as its YouTube and other channels. They are in English, Kurmanci, and Sorani.
Click on the photo at right to explore Kurdish culture–at your fingertips!
Read more about Silêmanî as a center of Kurdish culture here.
