Revival of art to impart education and peace

Karachi ([Pakistan], July 13 : The Directorate of Culture, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has come out with an aim to revive this decaying art of Peshawar live theatre, which once played a crucial role in creating awareness among the people, respecting the cultural significance of art.

Art, with its cultural significance, has the power to impart education. The history of early 20th century with the invention of social theatre is evidence to the fact that art can be used as a tool to imbibe values and teachings into a being.

The South Asian live theatre had a legacy of producing great talent for Bollywood. Though, once glooming, with changing times art had been striving to grow. According to the directorate, mobile live theatre can be used in effective ways to produce and promote narratives on peace, along with as a source that imparts knowledge on poignant social issues, as reported in the Dawn.

The immediate aim would be to create a bunch of selected individuals who would be trained and hired for professional grooming on the subject of theatrics.

Hence, the theatre activities would be revived. Ajab Gul, an actor and expert on theatre believes that old Peshawar theatre could flourish if sincere efforts were put in by real stakeholders.

"I offer my services to contribute to the said project. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has no dearth of talent. Before launching live theatre, it is also important to start teaching 'art' as subject at our colleges and universities," said Gul.

In his opinion, theatre is a powerful medium that could help in building a peace narrative and bringing about a substantive change at mass level.

Hence, it's important that live theatre should not be treated just as a mere show, people should understand the real meaning of art in education and should take a lot with them as a learning.

Many artistic projects are also aligned to be executed from next month onwards. Shahbaz Khan, culture deputy director, gave details and shared that a daylong help desk on craftsmanship and creative entrepreneurs, maximising the artisans' potential for a sustainable growth, two- day seminar on intangible cultural folk heritage, centennial celebration of Pashto fiction (short story) and revival of glazed pottery are all included in the list.

Khan also revealed that cultural mapping is crucial part in the process. He told that the work has started already with the collection information on artists, poets, writers, artisans, scholars and academics while language and literature unit already launched a multilingual e-magazine 'Yoon' that earned appreciation from online readers.

Different units of research and documentation, visual arts and craft, creative economy, languages and literature and new media and information technology have been set up for an optimized execution.

Set up of a library and an art gallery are also a part of the project. According to the officials, the plight of the artists and literati of the province was top priority of the government.

Imparting knowledge on peace and portraying the real image of the rural people further enhances the aim.

Source: ANI