Facing out, facing in: Auroville’s Visitors’ Center

Nicole, who has been part of the management team for the past 15 years talks about the function and challenges of running the Auroville Visitors’ Center.

How would you define the prime purpose of the Visitors Center?

The primary purpose of the Visitors’ Center is to try to give visitors a sense of what Auroville stands for in its essence. The first thing people should be exposed to is the raison d’être of this place, which is timeless. But as Auroville developed many activities over the years, we also expanded our core presentation to show what is being done in many different fields. So today, in addition to the Matrimandir exhibition, we also showcase exhibitions on the International Zone to highlight the international aspect of Auroville, on Auroville’s work on the environmental level and on Auroville’s best practices in alternative energy, social engagement, research work and much more.

We are also preparing an exhibition on Sri Aurobindo, The Mother and the advent of a new world. It will expose people to what they and the yoga represents – this incredible energy and push towards the future. The aim is to have this exhibition form a strong and peaceful centre in the middle of all the other activities that are happening here.

Has there not been an exhibition on Sri Aurobindo and The Mother at the Visitors Center before?

Information about The Mother and Sri Aurobindo has always been part of our Auroville exhibitions. However, when we made the present exhibition we decided not to have Mother’s and Sri Aurobindo’s picture on the walls – to have their photos and information on their lives and work on the reading tables – so that the first thing that people see when they arrive would not be the gurus. We did this to emphasize that Auroville is a universal city where anybody of goodwill can come. We decided to highlight The Dream and the key aspects of Auroville according to The Charter as the cornerstones for this exhibition.

There are so many different activities at the Visitors Center: exhibitions, boutiques, restaurants, an art gallery etc. How do you ensure that all these different activities present a unified picture to visitors of Auroville’s ideals and aspiration for excellence?

We have a management group made up of everybody who does something here. It meets at least twice a year to look at issues like this. Among other things, we have worked quite extensively on guidelines for the boutiques. Recently, we had an issue regarding which products could be sold in the boutiques, and what constitutes an Auroville product, and we agreed upon a document which defines this.

What about quality control in terms of the products that are sold in the boutiques?

So far this is been left to the boutique management because the people who run the boutiques are definitely very aware of the need to keep up a high standard in the products they offer. Of course, there are many different units in Auroville who would like to sell through the boutiques and the quality or relevance of their products can be variable. Sometimes, the boutique managers need help from the Visitors’ Center management group to address the fact that certain products are not up to the mark and cannot be sold there. To help in this regard we now have a small group of Aurovilians to whom such cases can be referred so as to maintain high standard.

At the Visitors Center you also very aware of your responsibilities to the community.

Yes, the Visitors’ Center is the interface between Auroville and the outside world. There is constant pressure from outside to turn Auroville into a tourist destination, so there is a constant challenge to respond to the interests that visitors have in a way that does not compromise our integrity and that impacts as little as possible on the life of the community. We receive on average as many visitors a day as the adult population of Auroville, so this needs to be managed. On a practical level, this includes maintaining and enhancing the pathway to Matrimandir – last year we put up an exhibition of painted stones along that path highlighting the twelve Qualities and their corresponding flowers – providing shuttles to Matrimandir for those who cannot walk and a free bus for those who do not wish to walk, back to the Visitors’ Center. We also rent out cycles to visitors and guests who want to see more of Auroville and we have created a pick up and drop vehicle service (City Transport) to help ferry guests to their guest houses when they arrive, as well as help people move around Auroville. (We do not allow visitors’ vehicles to come into Auroville: all have to park at the Visitors’ Center.)

Another way to respond to the needs of Auroville is to maximize the use of the infrastructure here in the evenings for the benefit of the community: this will be one of focuses this year. This means reviving the use of the video room, getting more things happening on stage in terms of art and music and, of course, creating Le Zephyr as a social space and low-cost restaurant for Aurovilians and volunteers. This is important as Auroville is becoming very expensive. We have gone towards the high-end market to maximise income yet, at the same time, we keep saying we need more young people to come and join us, people who clearly cannot afford this lifestyle. Actually, neither can many of us...

I think as a community we are failing these people to a certain extent. Le Zephyr is a start towards creating affordable and lively places for social interaction and to cater to the needs of people who come to work and volunteer in Auroville. Failure to do so only boosts the economy around us.

The Visitors’ Center seems to be a successful example of how productive units and services can work together. How did this happen?

I am a service person who finds herself being executive of two or three commercial units, so I have a foot in both worlds. We in the management team are very thankful for the fact that the commercial units have agreed to financially support the running of the Visitors’ Center. I think they do this partly because they saw that I was here to stay and committed to looking after this space. I think the commercial units look for that; they like to contribute to Auroville but they also like to see that their contribution gets ‘held’ responsibly.

It is also clear that even though the products of Auroville are known for their quality, the productive units recognise that people come to the Visitors’ Center primarily to see Matrimandir and learn about Auroville, and that it is important for them to contribute so that the whole Center be as attractive and informative as possible.

The symbiosis between the productive units and the service sector at the Visitors’ Center is very interesting and positive. We are building something together here and that’s a very good feeling.

In fact, there is a lot of energy in this place: it is something that has carried me from the very beginning.