SAHASRA SMRITI | CULTURAL MAPPING
Project OCMI
Odisha Cultural Mapping Initiative
The Odisha Cultural Mapping Initiative (OCMI) is a district-level heritage atlas programme under Sahasra Smriti. It is designed to document all 30 districts of Odisha across 31 thematic parameters, creating a verified, public-facing evidence base for cultural continuity, education, policy, tourism, and community recognition.
Parent Mission
Sahasra Smriti: Reconstructing Odisha's Cultural Memory Across Two Millennia
Partners
ParibhaAsha HeritEdge Lab & Quantum Impact Foundation
Geography
All 30 districts of Odisha
Project Overview
OCMI is the primary field documentation programme of Sahasra Smriti, a ten-year multidisciplinary mission by ParibhaAsha HeritEdge Lab to document, preserve, and revitalise Odisha's cultural heritage from 2026 to 2036.
Where Sahasra Smriti provides the mission architecture, OCMI is the instrument through which the mission meets the ground: district by district, tradition by tradition, community by community.
Why Cultural Mapping Is Needed
Odisha's cultural record exists across temples, archives, oral traditions, family memory, tribal knowledge systems, craft clusters, sacred landscapes, and contemporary cultural practice. Much of it remains fragmented, undocumented, or inaccessible to the communities and institutions that need it.
OCMI responds to this documentation crisis by building an integrated, interoperable, community-verified repository that can support policy, education, cultural livelihoods, research, tourism, and community recognition.
Scope of Work
30
Districts of Odisha
11
SDGs aligned with the initiative
900+
Structured cultural profiles
31
Thematic mapping parameters
The mapping parameters are organised into six clusters that move from visible cultural forms to deeper systems of knowledge, ecology, policy, digitisation, and research integrity.
Expected Outputs
Digital Cultural Heritage Atlas of Odisha with geo-tagged, multimedia, district-level cultural profiles.
30 District Cultural Dossiers in Odia and English for public, institutional, and educational use.
Audio-visual archive of oral traditions, performances, rituals, craft processes, and community histories.
Geo-spatial cultural map integrating cultural assets with administrative and landscape geography.
SDG Cultural Impact Report to support policy, advocacy, and partnership reporting.
Research Gap Register identifying future documentation and scholarship needs district by district.