Art, culture: NCA caught between a rock and a hard place

Gilani declared the institute a university in 2011, but it did not see the light on ground.

ISLAMABAD: The National College of Arts (NCA) campus in Rawalpindi, which is engaged in grooming the artistic skills of its students to help them succeed in the global cultural economy, is facing a plethora of problems.

The institute with over 400 students is actively busy in promoting art and culture besides art galleries, but it needs the attention of the Cabinet Secretariat, under whose control it operates.

In an interview with The Express Tribune, NCA head Dr Omar Nadeem Tarar spoke at length about the issues facing the institute and the efforts being made by it to promote art, culture and heritage.

“It was Sheikh Rashid who in 2005 forced the Pakistan National Council of Arts to vacate the current building, which led to the setting up of the institute here,” said Tarar. The main campus of the NCA, which is in Lahore, is headed by a principal, while NCA Rawalpindi is headed by a director.

Tarar said that currently fine arts, architecture and other courses were being taught at the NCA Rawalpindi and that from February, they were planning to start courses for product design, ceramics design, textiles and communication design.

“In 2011, former Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani declared NCA a university, but nothing was done on the ground [to upgrade its facilities to university-level],” said Tarar.

“Following the announcement, I prepared a summary and sent it to the headquarters, but to my utter dismay, it was not forwarded to the federal government for approval,” he said adding that after the devolution of the ministry of education under the 18th Amendment, neither was the Punjab government taking it seriously, nor was the federal government considering it when development funds were allocated.

The institute has been functioning without a board of governors for the last two years. Recently, the provincial government withdrew a notification to shift administrative control of campus to a director.

While talking about ongoing projects, NCA director said that after splitting the city into zones, under the preliminary survey of Zone-1 of the historic core of the city, they were documenting land use patterns, building typologies, identification of historic monuments, infrastructure and services, transportation and mobility, economic and social profile of the city, and building laws. “This is a sort of complete database of the city which has never been done before,” he said.

He foresees expanding the horizon of the NCA campus and internationalising it by engaging students with foreign universities.

“We recently signed a $10 million exchange programme with the Boston Architectural College (BAC) to start capacity-building for the students and faculty,” Dr Tarar said.

While talking about the rich culture of the city, he commented that nobody was taking care of important architectural buildings in the city — once a hub of Sikh, Hindu and Muslim culture.

“We are planning to establish a field school of arts to train students as conservation specialists, instead of engaging foreign specialists who are often not familiar with the region,” Tarar said.

While hanging around on the premises of the campus, the director pointed at the Liaquat Memorial Hall, once a hub of cultural activities, saying, “Now it is out of bound for public as Water and Sanitation Agency employees are parking their vehicles in the parking area for the hall.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 23^rd, 2013.