19 January 2020
Bahrain Culture Authority Holds its “Manama Call - Third Meeting”, At Bab al Bahrain
Bahrain Authority for Culture & Antiquities (BACA) holds its “ Manama Call-Third Meeting”, on 20 January 2020 at 4:00 pm at Bab al Bahrain.
The meeting comes as part of Bahrain Culture Authority’s efforts to shed lights on Manama city’s universal exceptional heritage, as reflected by its historical buildings and their identity that should be preserved due to their irreplaceable architectural heritage value. The rehabilitation of urban cultural projects is also part of BACA’s plans, as well as the inauguration of a virtual tourist map offering visitors a historical cultural destinations in the old city of Manama.
This strategic endeavor was launched by Bahrain Culture Authority in 2018, which aims to enhance the development of the City of Manama and nominate its urban history on UNESCO World Heritage List, as a creative city, shedding lights on Manama city’s universal exceptional heritage, as reflected by its historical buildings and their identity that should be preserved due to their irreplaceable architectural heritage value.
Indeed, in the past few years, a greater attention has been focused on the challenges of safeguarding not only historic monuments in Bahrain, but the environment in which they are located – in other words, old quarters, historic cities, like Manama and Muharraq and their historic urban landscapes. That is why Bahrain Culture Authority has made substantive investment in cultural heritage sites by implementing a number of national initiatives, projects and public-private partnerships to preserve and promote sites with an emphasis on the role of local communities to achieve balanced and sustainable development.
The meeting will enable BACA to launch its investment in human, urban and cultural identity initiative, through which it seeks to build partnerships with the private sector, official entities and the local community to increase interest in preserving human and urban heritage in the historic city of Manama. The initiative aims to enhance the living environment in Manama so as to enable it to regain its vital role as a capital of cultural, human and religious diversity, as well as a center for civilization and qualitative investment, ahead of including it in the world human heritage list and activating its role as a world creativity city. Therefore, civil society participation must be organized and supported, as part of a long-term program ,and an integrated strategy for conservation and urban regeneration must be put in place.
Worth to mention that Bahrain Culture Authority held its “ Manama Call-First Meeting” last year to implement a number of different initiatives, including awareness-raising campaigns, open free to public tourist tours to discover the urban and cultural aspects of the city of Manama, as well as meetings between the city’s beautification revival enthusiasts and its different social categories’ residents. In addition, BACA’s “Cinema Yateem” event was the fruit of a collaboration between the Bahrain Authority for Culture and Antiquities and Mawane, coordinated with Yateem Family, aiming to revive the concept of open air cinemas in the spaces of Manama, screening a series of films related to architecture, humanity and identity, between March- May 2019.
