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Culture and Development

Safeguarding and promoting cultural heritage in all its forms, tangible and intangible as well as to enhance enrich and transmit cultural diversity in all forms of expressions, traditions and ways of life have been the strategic thrust of SANKALP’S activities on culture. While the Organisation’s programmes on culture has an inter-country reach, the focus has been to disseminate India’s cultural diversity as embodied in the uniqueness and plurality of its regional cultural identities, linguistic multiplicity, and manifold creativity.

SANKALP interprets culture in its widest connotation. It adheres to the definition of culture as provided by the World Conference on Cultural Policies (MONDIACULT, Mexico City, 1982), the World Commission on Culture and Development (Our Creative Diversity, 1995), and the Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development (Stockholm, 1998); which define culture as the “whole complex of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features that characterize a society or a social group, and that it includes not only the arts and letters; but also modes of lives, ways of living together, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions, and beliefs, and that there is accordingly a close link between cultural diversity, peace and development”.

The Organisation recognizes the close link between culture and development, culture being a vibrant process and durable investment in sustainable human development, which has been effervescently espoused by World Commission on Culture and Development (Our Creative diversity), 1995. Culture needs to be elevated from a narrow focus on arts or from having the purely instrumental role in development to a more purposive, constructive, constitutive and creative role; wherein development has to be seen in terms that encompass cultural growth.

Culture has an important role in social cohesion in general and has a potential for the enhancement of the status and role of women in society. Gender and women development, therefore, has been one of the key areas of SANKALP’S activities on culture.

SANKALP’S strategic thrusts, objectives and programmes on culture; are guided by the international standards-setting instruments in cultural fields; which among others include; Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, 2005; Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003; UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity 2001; Final Report of the Stockholm Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies for Development,1998; Our Creative Diversity(Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development, UNESCO, 1995); Recommendation on the Safeguarding of Traditional Culture and Folklore, 1989; Mexico City Declaration on Cultural Policies, adopted by the World Conference on Cultural Policies(MONDIACULT), Mexico City, 1982; Recommendation concerning the Safeguarding and Contemporary Role of Historic Areas, 1976; Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage 1972; Recommendation concerning the Protection at National Level of the Cultural and Natural Heritage, 1968.

SANKALP’s activities on culture have been shaped under the guidance of SANKALP’s Programme Director (Culture), Mrs. Kasturi Pattanaik, who herself is an original creator and exponent of Odissi dance and folk/tribal/indigenous art forms.

Activities
SANKALP has been advancing the concepts, objectives, principles, Standards and practices conducive to the preservation and enhancement of culture in all its forms, tangible and intangible as well as traditional culture and folklore. These activities include;