HERITAGE WORLDWIDE e newsletter

INTACH programme to encourage conservation of heritage

Tribune News Service

New Delhi

In order to encourage students to undertake conservation efforts and preserve the city’s heritage, the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) has devised a programme for creating awareness among them about the local history.

INTACH has been organising workshops for schoolteachers so that they can spread awareness amongst students about the heritage of the country.

For this, it has been conducting workshops in several cities of India to train teachers to teach heritage, as a subject and has also prepared special tool kit for it, a statement by INTACH said.

A syllabus on heritage education as a subject, which has been made a part of the school curriculum by the Government of India and State governments in secondary classes, has also been prepared.

Under the programme, students will be encouraged to work on projects of their choice, including activities like mapping areas of the city so as to recover social histories and changes, conducting heritage walks and organising exhibitions of photographs showing heritage properties.

The Trust will act as a catalytic agent and provide them resource material and also coordinate their activities with official agencies, if necessary. The students will be encouraged to work with physically and mentally challenged children.

So far, three colleges have planned activities connected with heritage conservation during the next year. They include Indraprastha College, Kamala Nehru College and Jesus and Mary College.

Students from these colleges will conduct groups of visually-challenged children to historic places like Humayun’s Tomb, Siri Fort, Lodhi Garden and Safdarjung’s Tomb, and INTACH hopes that more colleges will join this endeavour.