What does culture have to do with development?

The central question has been how culture, integrated with more traditional instruments of development, can be used to improve lives in urban, poor and even remote contexts. How can culture generate employment, contribute to raising incomes, be a factor of wellbeing, improve health, enhance urban spaces, reinforce a respect for diversity, be a reference for individual identity and even restore pride and hope?

Along with emergency health care and food provisions, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture is often one of the first agencies of the AKDN to start operating in crisis situations. We consider it emergency humanitarian aid – first aid, if you wish.

We have been involved in several countries in situations during war, post war or other crises, including Afghanistan, Syria, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Mali. In those contexts, cultural heritage can – and should – be a component of a package of humanitarian relief measures.

We share this concept with other organisations that have well-established records: ICCROM, the Prince Claus Fund and the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, amongst them. The First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis handbook, published by ICCROM after nearly a decade of field experience, provides a reference guide – for cultural heritage professionals and humanitarians – that integrates heritage safeguarding into emergency and recovery activities.

The International Red Cross (through a post on “Humanitarian Law and Policy”) also argues why cultural heritage should be considered in the framework of humanitarian programmes: “From Palmyra to Timbuktu, we see that the destruction of cultural and religious sites during armed conflict has profound psychological effects, leaving people disconnected, traumatized and even persecuted. Cultural property protection must be recognized and better addressed as a humanitarian issue in its own right.”

In 2019, the EU and Iraq agreed that the EU’s “humanitarian aid and development assistance” package would include: “the restoration and rehabilitation of cultural heritage”. Likewise, the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (a resource centre led by the University of Birmingham), likens culture to a need: “Culture is the cement that holds a society together.…Culture is thus a basic need – and must be a normal part of humanitarian emergency relief and reconstruction processes.”

In Syria, as a pilot project, AKTC started the reconstruction of the Souk of Aleppo, one of the most important examples of medieval secular architecture in the Muslim world. It had been badly damaged during the conflict. It could not be abandoned to its own fate. Furthermore, its rehabilitation could provide opportunities to a community severely punished by the civil war. Our prime objective was to put back in service a historic site that plays a vital socio-economic role in the life of the community.

Our approach is to bring to bear a wide range of technical agencies to work together in a given area. For example, almost all AKDN agencies operate in Afghanistan – a country where AKDN and its partners have committed over US$1 billion in development assistance since 2002. Our cultural programmes in Kabul, Herat, Balkh and Badakhshan have restored over 90 historic buildings but, at the same time, we also conducted humanitarian, social and economic projects that spanned over 240 cities and towns in the country’s 34 provinces.

In Afghanistan, as in other countries, we tried to integrate cultural activities in overall development. This is unique, I believe. We feel that cultural heritage should be part of the multidisciplinary kit of development measures that can effectively raise economic prospects – and give hope – to people in critical situations.

First and foremost, parks have an economic impact. They create permanent employment and generate income. Our park projects in Delhi and Cairo, for example, are self-financing. In Cairo, gate receipts and restaurant operations cross-subsidise the maintenance of Azhar Park. In this way, the Park is not a financial burden to the public sector – Cairo being one of the most overburdened municipalities around the world.

It should be noted that in several of the fast-growing cities of the Muslim world, we have tried to compensate for the scarcity of green space. In Cairo, for example, before Azhar Park was built, one estimate suggested that there was an average of less than one square metre of green space per inhabitant.

Furthermore, the parks are typically “platforms” from which you can see the splendour of the city’s cultural heritage. In Delhi, you look upon Mughal monuments and learn about their history. In Cairo, you view Al Azhar Mosque, the Citadel and many other prominent monuments of the Old City. So the parks we build contribute to the enhancement of the cultural environment.

At the same time, we work to provide spaces for leisure where people from different social realms and origins gather and interact. They should be places of gathering.

Master planning touches on a wide variety of aspects that can improve the overall quality of life. Typically, we would try to improve many aspects of the urban context through master planning – as we are doing in Khorog, Lahore or Kabul. We try to reinvigorate the town centre while relocating housing growth away from peripheral areas. We also think master planning should contribute to a range of housing forms, business spaces and cultural venues, each a response to the diverse needs of the resident community. Master planning should also promote green design that increases energy efficiency in housing and infrastructure.

For example, in Lahore’s Walled City – where we have worked since 2008 – there have been spectacular improvements in the fabric of the historic city and in the quality of the environment. The process of change was gradual, but the benefits for the inhabitants are now evident to everybody. More recently, AKTC has been involved in George Town, Penang. Here, like in other geographies where we work, cultural heritage is not only a catalyst, but also an engine of economic development.