UCHP cultural awareness campaign in full swing: Zabidi night in Sana’a, and more [Archives:2002/42/Culture]

BY MUJAHED AL MUSSA’ABI
YEMEN TIMES STAFF
mujahed75ye@ yahoo.com
In the six weeks since the Urban Cultural Heritage Strategy Program (UCHP) has been launched, a number of programs are underway to help people appreciate the value of Yemen’s heritage.
The campaign was lunched in Zabid, one of the of the UN’s World Heritage Cities. It includes cultural activities, workshops, painting shows, and lectures. It has drawn the attention of people of the coastal areas (Tehama) to the value of their heritage assets.
After two weeks of activities in Zabid, the campaign shifted to Sana’a last week, and resumed its wide rang of intensive cultural activities which ranged from workshops to cultural nights, training courses and children paintings exhibitions.
Last Wednesday night, A Zabidi cultural night took place at the Yemeni Cultural Center in Sana’a and highlighted by the Zabidi popular music band which attracted the public with its unique shows.
Among the attendees was the Dutch ambassador and his staff, officials of the ministry of culture, donors, NGOs representatives, and ambassadors to Yemen.
A young 13-year old girl, Azhar Al Mezgagi, amused the audience with her lovely songs of Zabid. It was followed by a group of dancers (male & female) who performed the different types of Zabidi folklore dance; including dances with Jambias, swords accompanied to a drum beating.
The cultural night of Zabid proved that cultural heritage is not limited to the built historical heritage but it includes folklore dance, popular songs, poetry and traditional dresses.
Further, the UCHP organized a course called “training of trainers” held on Tuesday October 8 at the Management Sciences Institute. The course had 16 participants representing different governmental bodies from different governorates, and aimed to train participants, who in turn, will train other people on ways of protecting historical cities.
Dick ter Steetge, manager of the UCHP, said the group is training those people who come from 8 governorates around Sana’a so that they know how to train other people. They have been trained by an Egyptian trainer, Dr. Ra’afat Shumais, who trained them on the use of guidelines for historical cities, gave them lectures, took them to the old city of Sana’a, taking pictures, looked at violations and analyzed those pictures.
“We are planning to train about 300 people working in the historical cities. They are from PWs, Electricity & water, Endowment ministries, GOPHS and they are going to train other people in their related organizations who are not acknowledgeable about ways of preservation of historical cities,” he said.
Regarding the public response to the awareness campaign, Mr. Dick said that the reaction was quite positive and people are very interesting and responded positively to the campaign.
A 2-day workshop titled “The role of School in Urban Cultural Heritage preservation” was held Oct. 9 at Raba’ah Al Adawia girls school in Sana’a.
The workshop which was sponsored by the vice education minister, Dr. Bin Hebtoor, included 40 participants who are mostly, educational leaderships, academicians and teachers. They received intensive lectures on the ways of conveying the concept of cultural heritage to the pupils.
Yemen Times also met with Mr. Ali Aushieesh, Vice UCHP manager, who talked about the workshop objectives.
“The workshop specified for educational leaderships from different Yemeni governorates concerned the preservation of historical cities. It aims to inform with required role of the ministry of education, educational institutions towards the preservation of historical cities, enhancing schools to play it role in educating children about the significance of protecting our historical values through school syllabus and different activities, and showing the social, economic cultural and historical values and benefits of the cultural heritage,” he said.
“We hope that the related authorities activate its role to guarantee the continuation of the activities which should not be a seasonal awareness but sustainable policy of these authorities.” Aushieesh added.
Mr. Zain Al Abdeen Fuad, the awareness expert of the UCHP awareness campaign, said to the Yemen Times, “We concentrated on the role of school in activating the concept of cultural heritage among students. In Zabid we took children in a field visits to some historical sites of the city, for my surprised it was their first time ever to do that, and asked them to draw (Zabid Fort). You shall see their paintings here, the same was duplicated here in Sana’a. We took 1000 students in visit to the national museum in Sana’a, We have been used the puppet theater for this purpose, we took students to draw old Sana’a, and made many trips for them to different historical sites like Thula.”

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