Nūl Katha-i, Colombo

Weaving Us Together: Voices Across the Divide

Event Summary

Date: Friday 24 July 2026

Time: 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm 

Location: Barefoot Garden Café

704 Galle Road

Colombo 3 Sri Lanka

Cost: Free 

Complimentary drink at arrival, canapés, media conference, Katha-i, Colombo panel discussion, mingling and artwork viewing

Purpose & Vision

This evening marks a milestone in Nūl's journey.

Two years. Two Peace Rides. More than 2,000km from south to north in Sri Lanka. Over 30 community workshops facilitated with Tamil, Sinhala, Malayaga Tamil, Muslim, Vedda, and Burgher communities. Building trust, listening, co-designing and developing long-term initiatives shaped by the people who live them.

This is where the road meets the room.

Join us at Barefoot Garden Café on 24 July 2026: partners, media, artists, diplomats, volunteers, businesses and community voices, across communities. Leave knowing who Nūl is, what we have built, and why you should be part of what comes next.

About Nūl

Nūl means thread in both Tamil and Sinhala. It is a word that belongs to everyone.

We are a Melbourne-based organisation building connected and sustainably woven communities across Sri Lanka, weaving together local communities, diaspora and global allies through Education, Economic opportunity and Equity, our three pillars and the foundation of everything we do.

Nūl was brought into being in late 2024, from the conviction that reconstruction is not only physical but emotional, social and spiritual, and that it must be led by the communities who live it.

What we have built so far

The Nūl Peace Ride 2025 and 2026 have taken us 2,000km across Sri Lanka across two consecutive years, from south to north, facilitating more than 30 community workshops with communities who have rarely been centred in the story of Sri Lanka's rebuilding. In those workshops we have built trust across ethnic and religious divides, listened to what communities need most, created awareness of the possibilities that exist when people work together, built local capacity and capability, co-designed initiatives rooted in community knowledge and co-created long-term programmes that communities themselves are shaping and leading.

Fragments of Us, was Nūl's first event in Melbourne in June 2026. A Sri Lankan identity exhibition bringing together artists and community members from Sri Lanka and the diaspora. Over 300 people attended the opening night. More than 70 joined the Katha-i Conversation Series that followed.

The Nūl Community Hub is our long-term vision: planned 50-acre hubs in Sri Lanka's Northern, Eastern and Central Provinces where communities gather, learn, create livelihoods and shape their own futures. We have secured 4 acres in Kayts, in the north, as our proof of concept, the first living expression of the Nūl model across education, economic opportunity and equity. It is where we begin, while the 50-acre hubs continues to take shape.

What connects us is always greater than what divides us. It is the thread we are building from.

Event Schedule

6:30 pm Doors open. Canapés and drinks on arrival. Artwork from the Nūl Peace Ride community workshops and Fragments of Us, on display through the space.

6:40 pm Media conference with introduction to Nūl and the work to date, Q&A with desh Balasubramaniam, Founder of Nūl. Covering the Peace Ride 2025 and 2026, the community workshops across Sri Lanka, Fragments of Us, the Kayts Hub and what comes next.

7:15 pm Nūl Katha-i, Colombo: Weaving Us Together, Voices Across the Divide. A panel conversation bringing together voices from across Sri Lanka's communities. Panellists include Vigneswaran Thangeswaran, the Venerable Galkande Dhammananda Thero, members of the Nūl Peace Ride team and more.

7:50 pm The evening continues. Mingle, view artwork and connect with the Nūl team, riders, partners and panellists.

8:30 pm Close.