Legislation or the lack thereof for the arts is another core issue. As a one time member of the Board of Governors of the Lahore Arts Council, one tried in vain to raise interest in legislating for amendments to the Performing Arts Act. Based on a pre-independence document, the Act remains the official litmus for all artistic activity. Created by the British to restrain the ‘bloody natives’ from propagating seditious ideas against the Raj, the state continues to act on the principles laid down in a document that is obsolete and shamelessly reminiscent of its colonial past. Where in the world in sovereign countries are drama scripts ‘cleared’ by the home and law departments after a drama committee has ‘scrutinised’ the script? As if legislative atrophy was not enough of a challenge, the sound of failure reverberates through the corridors of the Lahore Arts Council itself. This institution as the Alhamra had nurtured all the arts with Justice S A Rahman as Honorary Chairman for the longest time. Luminaries such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Naeem Tahir and for a short period, Shoaib Hashmi officiated as secretaries over the years. The Alhamra promoted divas such as Roshan Ara Begum, Iqbal Bano and Farida Khanum under airy canopies. It exhibited Chughtai, Moeen Najmi and Shakir Ali on the second floor walls of the kothi. It nursed post-independence drama with Naeem and Yasmin Tahir, Kamal Ahmed Rizvi, Shoaib and Salima Hashmi, Attiya and Khayyam Sarhadi, Jamil Bismil and the thespian Khurshid Shahid on a makeshift stage ever in danger of the ceiling caving in. Now, the foremost art institution of the country is housed in an internationally award winning complex. The Lahore Arts Council, as it known, presents a picture of abject neglect, grimy with years of dust and dirt, poorly governed and even more poorly maintained. The halls echo emptily with filthy, paan (betel leaf)-spattered interiors, broken furniture, threadbare carpets and seats too heavily stained to be sat on without revulsion. Unpainted, soundless, lightless, the uneven, unvarnished stage floors and the wings are death traps for potential accidents waiting to happen. Naked wires spread a honeycomb of electric hazards; outsourced lights and sound equipment clutter up wings and halls. Teasers so heavy with dust that they weigh twice what they should, flats painted over so many times that they appear to be cast in stone, bathrooms boasting broken floors, faulty taps dispensing a constant trickle of water at all times, toilets that stopped working years ago and to top it all — the smell! Suffice it to say that the backstage smells worse than a public urinal. The Lahore Arts Council is not just a building — to be used as leasing halls for sleazy, near-pornographic activity masquerading as theatre. It was planned as an organisation whose duty it was and is to engage with living artists and audiences, to encourage and inspire to an even greater performance, promoting ambition, originality and boldness. Creative excellence in the arts in its most all-encompassing sense lay at the heart of the visionaries who founded the institution. That the Council has strayed from the vision is one of the major reasons for much art in Pakistan opting for places outside the operations of the Arts Council. Frozen in time and ill prepared, the Council has, in a sense, lost its relevance. The Lahore Arts Council, run by visionless men and women, has been bypassed in a world that has reconstructed the meaning of the arts. The classic notion of creation has transformed itself in the 21st century with art forms constantly morphing into mediums supplied by technology as much as it is by the artist in person. Artists in other countries have taken advantage of these multiple modes of expression by choice and now perform, display, share creative projects on the web, through video and film. Here, artists denied platforms, particularly in music, have had to resort to alternate modes by default. The Council has allowed neglect, inefficiency, nepotism and cronyism to ring the death knell for innovative art activity. With the result that the private sector, as in education, has stepped in with art galleries curating exciting new works and studios mushrooming to accommodate the increasing influx of young musicians eager to explore, innovate and have their voice heard. Theatre has been thrown a lifeline with school and college productions and TV has become the testing ground for writers and actors. Resultantly, and along with the rot that has set in otherwise, the once immensely promising analogue recording facility situated at the Lahore Arts Council has become a non-functioning obsolete white elephant. There is little consolation in the belief that in many ways, the Lahore Arts Council is simply a microcosm of how the state itself has been run. Marked by neglect and lack of vision, with impunity and corruption, smug in its authority without accountability, lawlessly and shamefully. However, we as taxpaying citizens are stakeholders in the cultural life of the country; in that we must hold the Council accountable for the nation’s public investment in its art and its artists. For the Lahore Arts Council to regain and revisit the vision of its founding fathers, it is imperative that critical reforms take place. First and foremost, ideally the Department of Information and Culture should be bifurcated into two separate entities. Information by itself is a hugely demanding activity and lumping it with culture inevitably robs the latter of the attention it deserves. Culture must be cut loose from the government’s basket of departments and be allowed an institutional status. Until such time, since we are aware of how painfully slow reforms take place, the culture department with its own minister, secretary and administrative setup may yet survive and become the living force all civilized nations aspire for, provided the team that runs the show comprises of qualified individuals who are full time visionaries. Secondly, the members of the Lahore Arts Council Board of Governors, selected on the basis of merit alone, must become proactive and be privy to the manner in which activities are planned and government funds spent. The Arts Council of Britain’s accounts are readily accessible to the public as there is a system of transparency in place. If the Council is given an annual grant by government and makes money every single day of the week (without rest periods for maintenance!), we have a right to know how and where the money is being spent. Thirdly, an executive director must be appointed on contract after due advertisement procedure rather than a handpicked candidate, to ensure that a qualified person from among the community of art practitioners leads the institution. Simultaneously, the Board of Governors under the aegis of the Department of Information and Culture should undertake an exercise to redraft the Performing Arts Act after consultation with the stakeholders and concerned citizens. As for us practitioners, we must accept that funds will always be tight since the arts and culture will not be a priority for the foreseeable future, but therein lies the challenge. For us, the importance of arts and culture lies in inducting the young and the old into an activity that promises to enrich them individually as they learn to love their culture and value their history. Ours is a vibrant creative society, which with a little help from the private sector and state patronage, may yet be able to convince the world that we are an extraordinary people with an extraordinary history. Only the arts can help us do that. (Concluded) The writer is Academic Advisor Lahore Grammar School and can be reached at navidshahzad@hotmail.com