The Al-Rafidain Center for Dialogue held a seminar today, Friday, to discuss the cultural reality in Iraq, the ways to advance it, and the challenges it faces.
The seminar reviewed the mechanisms necessary for developing the cultural and archaeological sector, along with discussing the financial and technical challenges faced by the concerned institutions.
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture, Fadel Al-Badarani, told the news agency that Iraqi culture has been relevant since ancient times, over seven thousand years BC, to the present day, in reviving ancient, contemporary, and current Iraqi culture.
Al-Badarani added that Iraq possesses many heritage and archaeological sites concerning a lot of intangible culture, customs, values, and Iraqi cultural and heritage legacies that are being developed and focused on, noting the interaction with international organizations and countries to promote Iraqi culture and export it abroad through marketing processes via cultural institutions in collaboration with media organizations and social media.
For her part, the program presenter and journalist Haneen Ghannam clarified that much of what was discussed in the session focused on mechanisms for financial gain, pointing out that the Iraqi government does not have significant financial allocations for the Ministry of Culture.
Ghannam told the news agency that the heritage and archaeological sector, despite all the existing problems, represents a real space and opportunity for development through financial gain, noting that there are people from outside Iraq, in addition to many Iraqis themselves, who have not seen their antiquities and do not know enough about their heritage.
She indicated that the contribution of external parties to development is a cause for regret, expressing her hope that future generations and modernity, along with artificial intelligence technologies, will be able to create a generation that possesses awareness and respect for civilization, despite her lack of optimism regarding the outcomes of the seminar, affirming her hope of being wrong and that the future will be better.