The Heritage Awareness Camp gave volunteers the basic idea of conserving buildings and understanding the significance of sculptures, paintings, murals, and frescoes | Photo Credit: Bishwanath Ghosh
Visva-Bharati, as part of a UNESCO project, is building volunteers who can work towards the conservation of old buildings, not only just Santiniketan, which recently earned the World Heritage tag and where the university is located, but historical sites anywhere in the country.
The institution is concluding, on Independence Day, a two-week workshop, called Heritage Awareness Camp, that gave volunteers the basic idea of conserving buildings and understanding the significance of sculptures, paintings, murals, and frescoes. It is a part of the UNESCO initiative to involve and empower young people in World Heritage preservation.
“The idea is to empower young people, allowing them to learn skills in basic preservation and conservation techniques and raise their capacity as future decision-makers. The purpose is also to engage the local community, making them aware of preservation and conservation,” said Visva-Bharati’s Prof. Anil Kumar, the project coordinator.
“We have 46 participants in all, most of them from West Bengal, a majority of them being students of Visva-Bharati. It was a rigorous programme, during which I also learned many things about world heritage and its management,” Prof. Kumar said.
Santiniketan was, quite naturally, in focus and the volunteers took part in targeted training through lectures, field visits, interactions, and study of available resources in order to aim for a harmonious balance between the academic environment and international/national tourist influx.
Tourist influx, leading to traffic situations, and encroachments are among two problems faced by Santiniketan, which got the UNESCO heritage tag in September last year. “We need proactive cooperation from the local administration as well as Central government. We also need to engage local communities,” Prof. Kumar said.
“The UNESCO, while awarding Santiniketan the World Heritage status, talks about it as a living heritage and a total work of art, which involves the buildings of Santiniketan and also the landscape, the artefacts, the furniture, the layout. It also talks about the protection of the environment and the use of festivals as salient points. Preserving this place is something that cannot take place in isolation. It has to involve the local community, people need to be sensitised; this workshop aims to reach out to a larger body of people who can radiate the idea of World Heritage and why it is important to preserve Santiniketan,” said Prof. Amrit Sen of Visva-Bharati, who was among the speakers at the workshop.
