The president of Arts Council Karachi, Muhammad Ahmed Shah is visiting Abu Dhabi to attend World Culture Summit. The Abu Dhabi Culture Summit is the world’s first high-level summit that convenes leaders from the world of Arts, Culture, Performing Art, Music, Theatre, Public Policy and technology to identify ways that culture can raise awareness, build bridges and promote positive change.
Talking to the newsmen, before leaving, Shah said that this year around 450 delegates from 80 countries will attend this summit, and from Pakistan I have been invited to represent Pakistan. He reiterated that this year’s theme is” Engaging under-privileged and at risk communities ”, and I feel this is a good opportunity to let them know the tremendous amount of work Arts Council is doing under the same theme, and interestingly we have started working on this theme ten years ago. We engaged the under-privileged and at-risk communities, specially youth through organizing the Youth Festival each year without fail, and we include the topics such as Public Speaking, enhancing writing skills, Music, Theatre, and Painting , to mention a few. Citing the details of the routine activities of the arts council, Ahmed Shah added that we have established academies for music, Painting, Theatre and performing art for the youth to be trained absolutely free of cost. We feel that this is the only way to divert the energies of the youth towards healthy and creative activities, as we firmly believe that Arts, Culture and literature are the first line of defense against any type of extremism. Giving the details he further added that this year arts council has started a mentor-ship program to nurture the youth in different fields of interest, and we arranged competitions with significant cash prizes, and the results were very encouraging. We found the hidden talent among the youngsters, which may help them to determine their future careers.
Ahmed Shah said that he is very hopeful that explaining the foreign world about the achievements of Pakistani youth will change the image of Pakistan, and it will help to attract the people from the world of art and culture to visit Pakistan. This will be the first step towards telling the world that Pakistan is the cradle of peace, love, harmony and art and culture.