Kalasha Kaleidoscope

Status : Completed
Date : 2019
Location : On The Web

Laajverd’s approach to the digitization of cultural assets is based upon recognizing and addressing the cultural landscape. Cultural landscapes and the assets within it are formed through alliance of community culture (Habjanič and Perko, 2018) and seen as places of traces and collective memory (Wylie, 2009) endowing objects and artefacts with certain attachments and value for the inhabitants. Cultural landscapes are formed through relations between social, material, tangible and intangible practices and act as ‘a socio-cultural repository unlocks a dialogue between our time and traces of the past. These traces are present as ‘live sensors’ not only in the land form, stones, water ways, vegetation and soil layers but also in the cultural practices and living patterns of the inhabitants of the landscape; (Hussain, 2016). Following Hussain’s (2019) approach to assessing objects and artefacts in relation to their environment, the design of the Kalasha assets for the website has been carefully planned to highlight Kalasha cultural assets in relation to their histories, networks, associated practices, materials and meanings rather than identifying them in silos. Narrating cultural assets through host communities’ by addressing Sustainable Development Goal 11.4 on cultural heritage, as well as paving way for 8.9 which calls upon nations to “by 2030 devise and implement sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products”. In remote mountain areas like Kalash valley where there is limited infrastructure, lack of training in service sector and limitations in regional mobility as well as lack of awareness and mechanisms for safeguarding cultural heritage, the tourism sector has yet to reach a desired level. The digitization of cultural assets of Kalash Valley ensures awareness and knowledge transfer to educate tourists as well as academia, policy and third sector. This project was funded by the UNESCO in Pakistan and led by Zahra Hussain and Fatima Hussain. Visit the website http://kalashakaleidoscope.org/