Towards a Bigger Country for Culture: Six Steps Towards the Future

Towards a Bigger Country for Culture: Six Steps Towards the Future

For many years, I was part of a group of Saudi academics, writers, and people engaged in all kinds of cultural work, who would head to Arab capitals such as Cairo, Beirut, Tunis and Casablanca, as well as various Gulf capitals, to attend conferences or seminars or to participate in festivals.

Throughout, we would compare what we have in Saudi Arabia with what our Arab brothers have, and our conversations would revolve around the lack of a Ministry of Culture or a similar body. When it was decided that a Ministry of Culture would be established and merged with the Ministry of Information, we smiled. However, it was half a smile, as half of what we aspired to had been achieved, only half of our dreams had been achieved. The dream was to see the establishment of an independent Ministry of Culture that would bring all the institutions together and provide serious and dedicated support to creatives, be they writers, artists or thinkers.

The cultural scene in the Kingdom is rich and extremely diverse. To those who do not know much about it, I say that, like many Arab scenes in particular, it is divided into three sectors:

The public sector, the private