Believing in the close connection between the youth’s forearms and the nation’s economy and the importance of involving them in programs and initiatives in various sectors, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, in partnership with the Creative Mornings volunteer team, will organize in the coming days a media campaign entitled Creative Industries in the Sultanate of Oman.
This campaign stems from the cultural strategy, which was supportive and directed to the cultural sector in general and the cultural creative industries sector in particular, as the cultural strategy defined its fields to include the fields of creative industries such as visual arts, performing arts, literature, translation, publishing, manuscripts, identity vocabulary and intangible cultural heritage, which is an important pillar underpinning the creative economy and cultural creative products; The cultural strategy also devoted an axis to cultural creative industries that includes strategic objectives related to enhancing awareness of the importance of investment in the cultural field, supporting and encouraging investment in sustainable creative cultural projects, providing facilities for projects in the field of cultural creative industries, and enhancing the economic contribution of the cultural sector.
This campaign aims to introduce the creative industries and their most important applications and economic, social and cultural returns to society, and to enable young people and entrepreneurs to share their goods locally and regionally, and to link these industries to the national economy for productive growth. Some effective regional experiences will be reviewed, and a number of initiatives related to the fields of cultural industries, especially cultural digital blogging, will be implemented.
In connection with this campaign; Ms. Maryam Al-Kharboushi, the supervisor of this campaign from the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, explained that the campaign comes to achieve the strategic goal of the ministry in promoting awareness of the importance of the field of creative industries and cultural investment in sustainable projects with economic returns, and the development of concepts related to this field such as the creative (orange) economy, the violet economy and cultural industries Shedding light on the opportunities that the Sultanate enjoys in this field, and in order to enhance the Sultanate’s presence at the regional and global levels, where this sector receives global attention, the United Nations declared at the 74th session of the General Assembly the year 2021 as the “International Year of the Creative Economy for Sustainable Development”.
With regard to the programs accompanying this campaign, Somaya Al Wahaibi, head of the “Creative Mornings” initiative, explained that the campaign includes several accompanying programs, the most important of which are “Creative Industries Sessions” via live broadcast on Instagram, which will start from next Saturday and will continue weekly until the end of the current year. The sessions will cover several topics related to the creative industries and the importance of the creative economy, and the violet economy. Various specialists and those interested in the fields of cultural creative industries will be hosted in the Sultanate and some Gulf countries, and successful international experiences will be highlighted.
The head of the initiative mentioned some of the topics that will be discussed in the sessions, such as developing the concept of creative industries in economic development, the Omani artist in the Omani creative industry, the Omani cultural heritage story-making (how to become an Omani storyteller), and the reality of the creative industry in Oman and its enrichment of the global and regional cultural scene.
Al Wahaibi added: “Among the accompanying programs is the Omani Women Wiki Initiative, which comes in partnership between the Creative Sabahat team, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth, the Ministry of Social Development, and the Wikimedia Foundation, where we took into account that women today are not properly represented in the digital field, and the best example Tangible is Wikipedia – the world’s largest encyclopedia – where only 17% of personal articles are for women. So it is our desire to help bridge this gender gap and give global impetus to an idea that has already been sparked by the Wikimedia community, by contributing to a global movement that calls on people of all ages. around the world to write, edit or translate Wikipedia files of women who have played an important role in education, politics, art, literature and various other fields.
Accordingly, through this initiative, the initiative will formulate, enrich or translate the CVs in Arabic and English of Omani women personalities in the fields of education, science and culture, social and human sciences, communications and information.
About the Wiki Women’s Workshop; Somaya Al-Wahaibi says: “This initiative will include a training program, where a group of volunteers will learn how to edit and improve a specific article by receiving basic training from Wikipedia trainers. During this training workshop, participants will learn in a simple way how to create an account on Wikipedia, and the basics of editing. In Arabic, and how to create articles and pages on Wikipedia, bearing in mind that the process of entering Omani women’s articles will coincide with the Sultanate’s celebration of Omani Women’s Day, where an Omani Women’s Wiki session will be held in attendance on October 18 in partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation, the Ministry of Social Development and the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth “.
Finally, the head of the initiative spoke about Fikr Violet’s field trips, which will be among the programs accompanying this campaign, where she said: “Belief in the essential role of culture to open horizons of openness to others, pluralism, and belonging, the idea of a youth training program to link cultural heritage with the creative industry complements the approach of the cultural strategy ( 2021-2040) to contribute to the preparation of cadres with sufficient awareness of the Omani cultural identity and its place in the modern era.
She added: “We have developed a training program for youth, whose participants will go through a series of practical and educational workshops that expand their knowledge in the fields of creative industry and cultural heritage, under the supervision of a group of experts.
