On the occasion of Pongal 2023, the Tamil Nadu government will organise another edition of ‘Namma Ooru Thiruvizha’, a folk art and cultural festival, in Chennai. In preparation for the event which offers a platform to folk artists, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) Deputy General Secretary and MP Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, and TN Tourism Development Corporation’s Managing Director Sandeep Nanduri visited a few parks in the city, to select a venue for the programme. Kanimozhi and officials visited Sivan Park, Nageswara Rao Park, and Semmozhi Poonga on Tuesday, 27 December, to explore the possibility of hosting the folk art festival. 

An edition of the festival was organised earlier in Chennai in March this year, at Island Grounds. The festival included performances of art forms such as silambam, therukoothu, karagam, and many others. At the time, Minister for Tamil Official Language, Tamil Culture and Archeology Thangam Thennarasu had said that the government had decided to conduct a grand folk art festival every year, where artists could showcase traditional folk art forms of Tamil Nadu. 

In May, Minister Thennarasu while listing demands for grants announced plans to spend Rs 6 crore on organising more editions of the Namma Ooru Thiruvizha in Coimbatore, Madurai, Trichy and Tirunelveli. Ahead of the Pongal edition of the festival in Chennai, an announcement was reportedly made asking artists who wished to participate to send a five-minute clip of their performance to the Department of Art and Culture.