PESHAWAR: The culture department of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Bacha Khan Educational Foundation (BKEF) have signed an MoU to set up culture resource centres for promotion and preservation of local arts, culture and heritage.The MoU was signed by Prof Khadim Hussain, managing director of BKEF and Azam Khan, secretary of culture department.Speaking on the occasion Prof Khadim Hussain said, revival of the dismantled cultural institutions, documentation of heritage and promotion of creative engagement are a pre-requisite to reconstruct the pluralistic democratic culture in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He added, the cultural centres would be later extended to other districts.
He elaborated that they were also thinking of setting up arts councils to promote creative thinking and arts. He said they had been running 14 schools already to promote culture through education. “We want to promote this culture educational model which would be introduced to government-run schools. Teachers in BKEF`s schools are already holding cultural activities in these schools. We would just be linking them to big cities and then international forums to promote culture”, Prof Hussain explained.“We are developing a database of all the artists, artisans and those organisations working for the promotion of culture and arts in the province”, said Prof Hussain, adding, they were also in the process of collecting and preserving idioms, phrases and local arts.Famous artist Jamal Shah, who is running Arts College Hunarkada in Islamabad, will be the technical advisor of this project, he said, adding, the cultural resource centers would be set up with the help of the culture directorate of the Sarhad Tourism Corporation.Mushtaq Khan, GM STC, said that they would coordinate and collaborate with anyone in the province who would work to promote culture – Dawn
