Since its establishment in 1936, Smt. Rukmini Devi Arundale has devoted herself to the furtherance of performing arts in India and Kalakshetra Foundation seeks to continue this dream by arranging performances by renowned veterans as well as promising artists of younger generation, awarding scholarships and through documentation and training programs.

Over the past 50 years, the Foundation has built up a large archive of audiotapes, videotapes, photographic images and documentary films on the Institution, its Founder and the Traditional performing arts in general.

The total holdings of the Archives (until August 2018) stands (approximately) over 1,00,000 black-and-white and colour digitized photographs, 500 black-and-white colour slides, 5000 hours of video recordings and 10,000 hours of audio recordings of the greatest stalwarts in the History of Classical Music.

The Institution aims at building up a large archive of audio/video tapes, photographs and films on the performing arts , for public viewing, since it has been granted the rights of all possessions from Sampradaya – a 30-year-old archival and documentation organization that has done extensive documentation and archival work in the field of south Indian music traditions. The institution also possesses recordings of the Festivals that were held in the campus.

The material is being digitised in collaboration with IGNCA (Indra Gandhi National Centre of Arts) for audio and video viewing. The digitized Audio and Video is then being editing and loaded into the TAG Systems for Viewing and listening. Material from these archives has been extensively used in publications, editorials, documentaries, and for research.