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Friday March 29, 2024

KP evolves first cultural policy after 18th Amendment

By Ziaul Islam
January 11, 2018

PESHAWAR: The first culture policy of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government calls for establishment of culture complexes, cultural education, censorship policy and encouraging research besides recommending other measures to preserve and promote culture in the province.

The 28 pages document available with The News is the first cultural policy the province framed after the devolution of the sector as a result of the passage of the 18th Amendment to the Constitution.

It took the province almost eight years to formulate the policy to preserve and promote the indigenous culture. The draft was approved by the cabinet in its recent meeting chaired by Chief Minister Pervez Khattak.

The policy covers most aspects of culture and underlines a holistic framework that provides meaning and context to different cultural products with an effort to create a close connectivity between inhabitants of the province for sustainable development.

The goals of the policy is to create conducive and enabling environment for the culture sector to flourish, acknowledge culture rights and promote diverse cultural heritage of the province, integrate culture and creative sector into economic and social development for employment and revenue generation and provide equal opportunities regardless of class, caste and creed.

The objectives included incorporating all tangible and intangible culture heritage including all major and minor cultural traditional festivals, languages, artifacts, performing arts, visual arts, literature and aspirations, facilitating small and medium entrepreneurs, safeguards rights of artistes, artisans, discourage the culture of violence, intolerance and fanaticism by promoting social cohesion and inter-cultural dialogue.

Other objectives are to promote indigenous culture to portray positive and soft image of KP to the international community, encourage conducting research on cultural issues, challenges and suggest feasible solutions.

The operational scope of the policy is the culture heritage of KP including tangible and intangible cultural heritage as defined by the Unesco.

The document suggests to the government to preserve the culture heritage through research, documentation, promote it through resource allocations and utilization and prevent the culture from disorientation.

It also stresses developing a platform in collaboration with the relevant ministries/departments and other autonomous bodies for the induction of culture with regard to development and promotional spending.

It said the initiative would help promote formal and informal education as tools for transferring of cultural knowledge, concepts and skills, develop, promote and propagate regional languages through production and publication of literary, organising promotional events and encouraging architects, planners, designers and engineers to incorporate indigenous ideas and aesthetics in building and other structures designs.

The policy calls for revival of theaters, social networking sites, blogs, media, photography and video recordings.

The document suggests integration of cultural studies in the curriculum for true identification of culture heritage, special education for artistes, artisan’s, craftsmen, encouraging research and creating awareness among the people through debates, seminars and publications.

The policy calls for establishment of at least one state-of-the-art cultural complex in each division to accommodate cultural heritage elements.

It highlights importance of traditions, literary, performing, visual arts and encouraging the establishment of arts associations to develop international links and promote cultural exchanges for mutual benefits and conducting exhibitions.

The last chapter details the importance of culture entrepreneurship to develop new business startups on the cultural and creative potential of the region and capitalize on ideas resulting in business activity.

It also called for a strategy to protect the culture heritage from manmade and natural calamities and develop a proper inspection and maintenance system of cultural heritage sites, run awareness campaigns and other steps.

Deputy Director Heritage and Spokesperson for Directorate of Culture Shehbaz Khan said the policy aimed at documenting the culture heritage property and devising a mechanism to preserve the culture.

He said to improve the standard of life of artistes, promote the cultural goods export, ensure cultural liberty to people of diverse ethnic groups, ensure equal cultural rights of all and implementation of UN or Unesco conventions about culture.