The Foundation for the Safeguarding of the Cultural Heritage of Rabat, which is chaired by Her Royal Highness Princess Lalla Hasnaa, participated in the UNESCO World Conference on Culture and Arts Education 2024 and shared its experience in a parallel event on February 14, 2024, under the title: Building the capacities of learners and culture professionals and promoting research on related topics.
This event, organized by the Foundation for the Safeguarding of the Cultural Heritage of Rabat, in partnership with the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO) and the Islamic Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA), focused on the best cultural and artistic practices in the Islamic world. The event was also an occasion for education, arts and culture professionals to share their experiences on the subject, by opening a broad scientific debate on the challenges and opportunities of an integrative approach that combines education, art, culture, teaching and lifelong learning.
In this session, participants emphasized the importance of uniting the efforts of stakeholders to create an alliance and promote an approach that can bring together education and culture and open the discussion on the need for considering context in education, inclusion and lifelong learning, as well as the status of teachers and the development of pedagogical tools in the field of arts and culture education.
The function of art as a universal language was present in this parallel event, through a philosophical approach that highlights the art of Arabic calligraphy. IRCICA has indeed looked at Arabic calligraphy as a subject that can be fruitfully included in the school curricula and/or supplementary and reference materials with the aim of addressing cultural topics, promoting cultural awareness and building intellectual intercultural understanding.
In addition, the session devoted part of the discussions on the need to integrate and adopt cultural heritage in education by creating a dialogue between the education sector and the entities concerned with heritage (museums, institutions, associations, artists, etc.).
During this parallel session, speakers shared the pedagogical methods they have adapted to the contexts and conditions in which they work, and illustrated the unifying role of heritage concepts in art and culture education, thus showing how heritage can become a gateway to understanding the human presence in art and culture across time.
This participation aims to further unify the efforts of actors in this field, which the Foundation for the Safeguarding of the Cultural Heritage of Rabat is working to consolidate through its commitment to participate in prominent international events concerned with cultural heritage and education. In addition, through its numerous programs, in particular its workshops program, the Foundation also brings together experts, specialists and professionals, within round-tables that seek to explore all aspects of heritage and culture issues, by sharing local and international experiences in order to benefit from them and keep abreast of all the changes that cultural heritage is witnessing at the local and international levels.
