We associate culture with a step back: the works of long-dead poets, old masters, classical music and dance. For example, in Saudi Arabia, the Jenadriyah Culture and Heritage Festival celebrates the region’s heritage.
But culture is more than just celebrating the past, it’s also about the future, welcoming replacements and embracing the future, and this is as true in Saudi Arabia as anywhere else.
Culture A
The kingdom has a very strong view of culture. In fact, culture is at the heart of Saudi projects for the future. Its Vision 2030 program is intended to stimulate citizen and resident participation in cultural activities. And culture is broadly defined. It’s just music and poetry. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Culture has expanded its role to include 16 other cultural forms, adding cinema, fashion and culinary arts.
There are practical reasons for this emphasis on culture; it is a component of the progression of a satisfying lifestyle, of course, but it is also a way to expand the economy, which is because Saudi Arabia is diversifying away from oil production. And just as array culture is a vehicle for exchanges with the outside world, a means of establishing the kingdom’s relationships with the rest of the world.
While Saudi Arabia integrates more strongly with other countries, it also adopts some of the criteria that many other nations follow, reflected in the growing diversity of leadership in the arts and culture: for example, Dr. Amal Fatani has been named a cultural attachion. to the United Kingdom (one of the 3 in this post), while Dr. Zainab Al-Khudairi is the head of the kingdom’s cultural department.
An investment
These adjustments are accompanied by abundant investment in culture. There is, of course, Ithra, a replacement beacon in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and a window into global cultures for its citizens. Opened in 2018 and housed in an inspiring building, Ithra (more officially the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture) is an area that aims to deliver transformative reports that people can see through culture and innovation.
Ithra is a major investment. It’s not just a building. It is a continuous collection of systems designed to fuel creativity, inspiration and pastime for lifelong learning. Educational workshops are coded with culinary experiences, film screenings, museums and functional art. By providing this rich cultural mix, Ithra supplies Saudi Arabia with a source of potential, providing citizens with wisdom and stimulating curiosity.
The organization’s project, as described by Ithra director Hussain Hanbazazah, is simple: “enrich culture, art and society. “By celebrating innovation and classical culture together, Ithra is helping the kingdom maintain the afterlife as it moves toward its new future.
Another primary cultural investment is the Mega Diriyah Project, a progression designed to maintain and celebrate the 18th-century home of Saudi Arabia’s leaders and the iconic Diriyah monument at a global gathering site.
These and other investments demonstrate the determination of the Saudis and the percentage of their cultural achievements.
The pandemic and in the Arab world
The cultural scene of the Arab world is alive. In fact, as Saudi director Ali Alsumayin said, “before the pandemic, we lived in a cultural boom, especially in the kingdom. “
And then the global hit Covid-19, which inevitably had a primary effect on artistic efforts around the world, Saudi Arabia was no exception. A study report for Ithra, Art, Culture and Covid-19: The Expert View identified two main effects of the pandemic on cultural life.
First, the pandemic has ended the classic revenue-raising routes for artists, museums and many other parts of the cultural ecosystem. Theatres and festivals, where other people paid to meet, were affected.
And secondly, certain types of artistic activities have become impossible. Film making, for example, was interrupted, at a time when the preference for watching online videos was developing among others trapped in their homes.
However, not all news is bad. Commercial opportunities to sell cultural items such as artwork and jewelry still exist online and have in fact evolved as others seek to spend cash in new ways. Indeed, despite the pandemic, cultural progress in Saudi Arabia has remained and even accelerated in some regions.
Positive pandemic
Among the many benefits of the pandemic in Saudi Arabia, one of the highs is greater creativity; deprived of classical opportunities, artists have been forced to locate new work tactics, according to Maya El Khalil, director of the Athr Contemporary Art Gallery in Jeddah, “artists will continue to find cutting-edge tactics to communicate, succeed, explore and express themselves. “
And that turned out, with specific online media providing new tactics for sharing and exploring culture. For example, Ithra director Hussain Hanbazazah describes how, due to the physical closure caused by the pandemic, “we organized systems that were not based on direct communication, but through contact with the public to co-create the content. “
The interest of artists has also changed. Forced to remain at home, isolated, the artists were driven to further introspection. Basma Al-Shathry, curator of the Misk Art Institute, discovered something quite beautiful. “Artists use their non-public stories for their work, where they immerse themselves in their own memories and flows,” he says. The poet and filmmaker Ahmed Al Mulla adds another vital point: “The other thing we learned in isolation is the importance of being rooted, not only in our country or our region, but also in our home, from which we have almost forgotten the corners because of the speed of life around us.
It is also vital not to forget that isolation does not necessarily mean a lack of collaboration. Just as entrepreneurs and teachers get used to sharing concepts through Zoom calls, artists use online generation to paint together. remote individual artists, innovation and creativity are increasing. It turns out that even the loneliness of enclosed societies can have cultural benefits.
Another advantage, perhaps unexpected, was the extent to which the online change of higher audiences. Hussain Hanbazazah of Ithra explains: “We have a much wider audience than we thought before. An example is our sci-fi nights, which attract between 30 and 35 participants. Our first online consultation attracted 250 participants. During the closure, we partnered with more than 30,000 people from 75 countries around the world. Thra learned from this and reopened with a combination of physical and online programs.
In addition, as we slowly get out of lockdown, there are also benefits for consumers of art and culture. The physical delight of art is important: visiting galleries and museums, seeing and even manipulating cultural artifacts that are grouped with others to provide context. and contrast: these are essential elements of commitment to culture AND, at least in the short term, the physical distance needed to manage the pandemic means fewer congested galleries, with pre-planned routes that visitors can stick to, finding things that could fail in a different way.
The long history of culture in the kingdom
The long history of art and culture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is undoubtedly positive, despite the setbacks caused by the pandemic. We have already noticed that the generation is getting used to art in new tactics: virtual scales in museums and “distributed” choirs. online, for example. In addition to providing new experiences, this generation also brings new audiences for art and culture, others who in the past would not have been able to make a stopover in galleries and theaters.
We are witnessing a reconsideration of the role of museums in the Arab world. Curator Maya El Khalil asks a vital question when she asks, “What does it mean to have a universal collection when other people can’t?”Perhaps it’s time to start talking about collections, the presence of local audiences and their commitment to art and even the distribution of museum strength in various museums around the world. “
The location of the culture, with the local population and visitors from a local area, to interact with the artifacts that apply to them, would be powerful, especially if combined with broader regional, national and foreign experiences, in all likelihood disseminated online.
We are also seeing the emergence of new cultural experiences. Using virtual generation to create artifacts that others can interact with or respond to a conversion environment opens up many new opportunities for experimental and classical Saudi artists.
The government of Saudi Arabia has shown a strong determination for the arts and culture in the kingdom. As the world evolves, Saudi Arabia is becoming even faster. Culture is at the heart of this change.
www. ithra. com/en/
© Business Reporter 2020
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