The Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) conserves built heritage, supports musicians, encourages excellence in architecture, runs a museum and offers education across its disciplines. It offers awards in music and architecture, and in its turn has received 20 awards for its restoration of historic cities around the world. But what ties these fields together – and what does culture have to do with development?
“Culture is not a mortgage but an asset to be exploited for the benefit of communities,” Luis Monreal, the General Manager of AKTC, explains.
“Culture is the soul of our body. It is the software that makes us rational, that gives us an identity, that makes us have feelings. In development, culture is this essential ingredient that allows people to feel that they belong to a community, that allows people to understand that there are other communities that should be respected.”
Luis’s journey ranges from Egyptian archaeology to mediaeval art curation. He founded the Getty Conservation Institute and served on the Master Jury of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture before taking on his current role in 2001. His AKTC work incorporates both immaterial culture, such as music, and tangible aspects:
“The built environment [is] the most important framework for our lives. If we destroy this built environment, if we totally renovate it every generation, we will lose our identity. When we restore or rehabilitate historic cities, we are preserving assets that have an economic potential for current and future generations. In many cases, as his Highness has said, cultural heritage is the only viable asset that the community has.”
Luis considers AKTC to be unique, with its span of disciplines taking in architecture, music, education, heritage and more. “Agencies in AKDN are so diverse in the fields they operate in that they open more possibilities for co-funding from third parties.”
AKTC’s uniqueness also lies in the links it creates between cultural heritage and social and economic development.
“In 1970, the Award for Architecture organised a seminar in Cairo with a very distinguished specialist on architecture,” recalls Luis. “His Highness attended the seminar and he viewed, from the top of the Mamluk House, this barren land, Al-Darassa hill. He asked how much green land there was in Cairo, how many parks. And they said there are no parks here. And then he said, ‘I’ve been so impressed by the city, by this seminar here, that I would like to offer as a gift a park to the city of Cairo’.”
As construction of Al-Azhar Park began, the team found themselves in one of the poorest areas of town, and wanted to address the human needs on the other side of the Ayyubid and Fatimid walls that bordered the site. This is how the Historic Cities Programme’s combination of urban rehabilitation alongside green spaces started.
When investments in public space in cities such as Cairo, Kabul and Hyderabad are combined with microfinance and health programmes, the results are demonstrable. “We measure the impact, for example family income over time, how this has progressed in a certain area of the city where we work, how it compares with other parts of the city or other cities in the same country.
It is fundamental for people to understand that AKDN is a development agency that works for everybody, that obviously attempts to improve the lives of the Jamat, but doesn’t discriminate. It is very important, I think, that we work in countries like Egypt where there is not an Ismaili community. It is important that we restore Sunni mosques and not only Shia mosques, because it shows that we are working for everybody.
And this role of AKTC is particularly important in certain countries where the Jamat is very small. In Malaysia, I think the Jamat is several hundred people. Because of the involvement of AKTC in the old city of Georgetown in Penang, it has a profile which is higher and much more respected than before. Why is it important to have a museum in Toronto? Because I think since this museum has existed, the community in North America can be proud of having representation at the highest possible cultural and educational level.”
Where the Jamat is present, they also benefit from the employment and capacity building of these projects, such as the Forts being transformed into hotels in Northern Pakistan.
Luis notes that culture is an evolutionary process, with new generations inventing new languages and interests. “To plan the next ten years requires anticipating what could happen. And the avalanche of information through the media makes it more difficult to understand the trends that are significant. But what I think is obvious is that as a large segment of humanity is fulfilling its material needs, culture is becoming more important.”
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The full interview is now available to watch on The Ismaili TV on demand.
