Daily Times

LAHORE: The Walled City of Lahore Authority (WCLA) plans to launch human libraries at Lahore Fort which will start from September this year.

This project will be one of its kind in Pakistan.

So far, the concept of human libraries has started in different countries of the world like China, Denmark, the United States, India, the United Kingdom but Pakistan had no such attraction for the tourists at the popular tourist sites or monuments.

WCLA Marketing & Media Deputy Director Tania Qureshi, while talking exclusively to Daily Times said, “A Human Library is an event or a continuous activity that aims to create dialogue and understanding between people and the tourists visiting different historic sites. In such activities the individuals or the native of the area volunteer themselves as human books and people or the tourists instead of reading the books can have a one to one conversation with the volunteers and share in a dialogue about that individual’s experience and historic events which the individual had witnessed over his lifetime at those sites.”

She said that sometimes, references cannot be found in the books and therefore in such cases, the people are a real primary source of information.

“The human libraries all over the world are designed to conduct a healthy and a positive conversations among the individuals and the tourists or researchers and it aims to change and challenge stereotypes and prejudices through dialogues and conversations. At such points or events the difficult questions are expected, appreciated and answered by the individuals and this is what we are planning to do at Lahore fort as this site is a mark of many empires and people come up with a lot of questions and confusions, which I guess would be resolved through such an initiative,” Tania Qureshi added.

She was of the opinion that the concept of book reading is decreasing as the younger generation is now moving towards digital media and this way, WCLA would be able to attract the younger generation towards history and culture.

Talking further about the venture’s process, Qureshi said, “We would be having dedicated days for these libraries and wish to launch these sessions, once the weather is acceptable for such outdoor activities. The activity would be held in the day time and preferably on weekends so that people are free to come and visit the human libraries. We plan to set up this activity in the lawns of the Fort and Deewan-e-Aam area and as a tourist would enter the place they would be able to see a list of people and the stories they have with them. The interested people can walk to their own individual and listen to whatever one wants to know about the place. The stories would not only be relating to the Lahore Fort, they would cater the entire Lahore. Any tourist, researcher or a visitor would be able to approach the person in charge of all the individuals and the in charge would be able to arrange the concerned individual for the tourists. We would go with a tagline saying ‘browse our human catalogue’. We will also be involving our tourist guides in this activity that are residents of old Lahore and have heard stories from their ancestors.”

WCLA Marketing Assistant Director Khola Nasir added that routine activities would be done twice a week and special stories in a month would be organised as an event.

“We would be promoting this unique concept on social media for the awareness of the masses as it is being done for the first time in Pakistan. We plan to involve the locals of the walled city Lahore in this activity as they are the ones who would be having numerable stories to tell,” Khola Nasir said. Further she added that the social media campaign for this concept would be starting in August and the sessions would take place in September this year.

“To WCLA, this was a unique idea and based on the concept that personal to one to one conversation will allow a personal experience of sharing, questioning and reflection which would thoroughly create awareness about the history and the historic sites,” Nasir added.

WCLA Lahore Fort Marketing Director Asif Zaheer said that it was a unique idea and was already being carried out in many other countries of the world.

“At present the younger generation needs to be aware of their history and importance of the monuments and I think this would be an initiative to meet this aim by conducting the first few sessions at the Lahore Fort which is a world heritage site,” Asif Zaheer added.

Published in Daily Times, July 30^th 2018.