The changing face of Dhaka's foreign cultural centres
As Dhaka's art world has matured and the city's security landscape has shifted, its foreign cultural centres have adapted — some quietly, some by necessity
There was a time in Dhaka when the world felt both impossibly large and intensely localised. If you wanted to see it, hear it, or understand it, you had to physically go somewhere.
Look back at the city's cultural documentation around the late 2000s, and you will find critics reflecting on a shift that began in the 1980s, when Bangladeshi artists started securing a foothold in the international art circuit, gaining exposure and returning home with a new kind of professional rigour.
The local atmosphere changed accordingly. Even a decade earlier, art galleries in the capital had been few and far between, and the concept of an art market barely existed. But as the new millennium approached, art connoisseurs developed an appetite for innovative work, and the physical spaces needed to hold these conversations began to appear.
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The government did its part, setting up spaces like the Shishu Academy Gallery, Osmani Memorial Hall, and the National Art Gallery at the Shilpakala Academy. But some of the busiest cultural arteries for the city's youth and its avant-garde thinkers opened up after the mid-1990s, when the cultural wings of foreign diplomatic missions began opening their doors to the public.
Alliance Française, the Goethe-Institut, the Russian Cultural Centre, and the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre became something far more than language schools. They offered gallery space to promising painters who could not afford commercial venues, and they became gathering spots where art enthusiasts, critics, aspiring filmmakers, and cultural activists could meet, debate, and collaborate.
Today, that landscape looks different. The energy that once defined these foreign cultural centres has settled into something more structured, more security-conscious, and increasingly digital — though several of the centres are, in their own ways, working to bring some of that older vibrancy back.
Part of this shift is a natural consequence of the art scene's own success. As it matured, painters and curators began opening independent galleries of their own. Artist-run spaces took on more of the responsibility for hosting exhibitions, so the local community no longer had to rely solely on foreign missions for a wall to hang their work.
A larger part of the shift, though, is tied to how people now consume media and move around the city. Before high-speed internet and streaming platforms, watching international cinema or reading foreign literature usually meant leaving the house — checking a printed schedule and showing up at a screening room for a French New Wave classic or a German thriller.
Today, a cinephile has a vast archive of global cinema available from a laptop, and there is correspondingly less incentive to sit through Dhaka traffic for a film that can be streamed from home.
Ask anyone who grew up in Dhaka in the late 1990s and early 2000s about the Russian Cultural Centre Bangladesh and you will hear stories that sound almost mythical today.
It was a hub of the city's underground music scene, where a given weekend might bring a heavy metal concert in one hall and a screening of an obscure foreign film in another. School, college, and university students turned up in numbers; no invitation was really needed.
In the last two years, the centre, now officially the Russian House for Science and Culture, has been actively trying to reclaim some of that earlier vibrancy, even as its overall programming has shifted in focus. The casual crowds of teenagers with guitar cases are less common than they once were, but the centre's efforts to re-engage a broader public are ongoing.
Khandaker Md Mahmud Hassan remembers this era well. Today, he is the programme coordinator at the Goethe-Institut, a position he has held for more than a decade. Long before that, he was one of the eager visitors navigating Dhaka's cultural circuit, taking French classes at Alliance Française and attending film screenings there. For his generation, the Goethe-Institut, Russian and Indira Gandhi cultural centres were the default destinations.
"We used to hold film screenings, filmmaking workshops, and film festivals regularly," Hassan recalls of the Goethe-Institut's earlier operations. "Apart from exhibitions and other activities, we put a special emphasis on film. Many film clubs and societies collaborated with us, and we helped them with whatever support we could provide back then."
For years, the Goethe-Institut played a significant role in shaping Dhaka's independent film community, and it continues to honour that legacy through a monthly programme called Cine Sandhya, or film evening. Organised with student groups such as the BUP Film Club, Jahangirnagar Cine Society, and the University of Asia Pacific Film Club, the evening typically features one German and one Bangla film. The scale of the festivals and workshops has changed, but the format persists.
"The way we used to hold programmes for film has indeed lessened in recent years, but we are still open to arranging film festivals and other programmes if we get such proposals," Hassan explains.
The institute's cultural offerings have diversified instead: piano concerts, contemporary dance classes, specialised exhibitions, and language classes sit alongside larger international collaborations, such as a recent project on the Sundarbans under the European Union National Institutes for Culture network.
Perhaps the more notable change is not in what the centres offer, but in who comes through the door.
"Because of technology and media, a lot has changed," Hassan notes. "The audience back then was more enthusiastic and dedicated. Now, the audience we get — for example, in our screening sessions — mostly consists of the film club members who are organising the event, film students, or students of the German language who are willing to learn by watching the films. So the audience who used to come by just for the sake of watching a film is missing nowadays."
This points to a broader pattern across Dhaka's contemporary art scene: fewer casual visitors, and a public that is more likely to attend with a specific purpose in mind rather than wandering in on a whim.
The Goethe-Institut, for its part, is investing in its physical presence.
Established in 1961, it has long served as a bridge between Germany and Bangladesh, and it recently reopened its renovated premises at House 10 in Dhanmondi under the slogan "Back Where We Belong". The revamped space includes upgraded classrooms, a redesigned library and media lounge, and improved digital infrastructure.
Access to these spaces, though, is shaped by security considerations that have built up over roughly two decades — from the political state of emergency in 2007 to the 2016 Holey Artisan attack — which changed how foreign institutions operate in the city. The open-door approach of earlier decades has given way to more structured protocols. The Goethe-Institut still holds public events, though a growing number are invitation-based or private.
This security-first approach is especially visible at the British Council. It continues to run arts and culture programmes, maintaining strong relationships with its programme partners, but its core identity has shifted more heavily toward language learning and academic testing, with a notable emphasis on youth engagement. The security around its premises — gates, guards, entry checks — is thorough, and can feel like a barrier to someone without a clear reason to be there, even as those already inside describe it as a supportive environment.
Security concerns are most starkly illustrated by the case of the Indira Gandhi Cultural Centre. For years, the centre in Dhanmondi was a well-integrated neighbourhood hub, hosting exhibitions, yoga sessions, classical dance, and music classes. During the unrest and mob violence that followed the events of August 2024, the centre was targeted and damaged by fire.
It subsequently relocated from Dhanmondi to the more heavily secured diplomatic zone of Gulshan 2, operating out of the Old India House. It has since restarted its classes, though the move has changed its audience: the shift away from Dhanmondi has made it less accessible to the crowd that used to frequent it there, and current security arrangements mean entry is now largely limited to enrolled students and invited guests rather than casual visitors.
Amid these shifting priorities and tighter security, Alliance Française stands out as something of an exception.
Among Dhaka's foreign cultural centres, it remains one of the more consistently active hubs for the arts, with something happening most weeks. It regularly provides gallery space to emerging artists — sometimes hosting two exhibitions at once — and welcomes both established artists and school-level creatives.
Md Mamun Ar Rashid, cultural officer and programme coordinator at Alliance Française de Dhaka, cautions against imagining the past as an entirely open golden age.
In the 1990s, he says, the centre's regular visitors were drawn largely from a comparatively narrow circle of artists, poets and intellectuals. Today, students and members of the wider public use the space more frequently.
The difference lies less in the number of people who enter than in what they do once inside.
"Visitors now tend to attend specific events rather than engage in extended, informal interactions," Mamun said. "The culture of intellectual gathering and prolonged discussion has diminished, and with it, the presence of a more discerning and critically engaged audience."
The range of programmes, he adds, has not changed as dramatically as audience habits have.
Alliance Française still organises many of the activities it offered in the early 2000s. Exhibitions can attract sizeable crowds, while attendance at film screenings and intellectual discussions has declined.
Mamun connects this change to the immediate availability of digital content and to a declining appetite for sustained engagement. Younger audiences, he observed, often have less patience for long screenings and discussions. They have not abandoned cultural events, but they participate more selectively and casually.
Even so, maintaining public access remains a deliberate institutional choice.
"In comparison with many other foreign cultural institutions, the Alliance remains notably open and accessible to artists, photographers and the general public," Mamun said. "Basic security measures, such as archway screening, are necessary, but no restrictive entry procedures are imposed. The aim is to ensure safety without compromising an inclusive and welcoming environment."
Nuzhat Jahan Nuha, a member of the Dhaka University Film Society, has worked closely with several of these centres to organise programmes. For her, Alliance Française has held on to something the others have lost some of.
"Alliance Française provides a warm, welcoming vibe," Nuha says. "I know that even without any reason, I can go there and hang around on a random afternoon. Compared to other cultural centres, they are more accessible and they do a lot of programmes."
That ability to drop by without a specific reason is part of what helped build Dhaka's art scene in the first place, and Alliance Française has largely retained it — functioning not just as a language institute, but as an active community space for workshops in art, film, and music.
The story of Dhaka's cultural centres is, in many ways, one of adaptation. In the 1980s and '90s, these foreign missions served as a primary outlet for an artistic community with few alternatives.
Today, the landscape looks more varied — shaped by new security realities, changing media habits, and a maturing local art scene — but the centres remain active, and several are visibly working to widen access again. The role these institutions once played, as the default meeting point for the city's youth, has changed, even as the institutions themselves continue to evolve.
