The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Director General of Syriac Culture and Arts, Kaldo Ramzi Oghanna, stressed the importance of technology and digitisation of information in preserving the heritage and cultures of endangered peoples. This was during his participation in a specialised conference organised by the Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TARII) in cooperation with the University of Kurdistan Hawler (UKH) in Erbil on Friday 16 February 2024, which discussed the topic of how to preserve heritage in Iraq.
In his speech, Oghanna pointed to the new horizons adopted by the General Directorate, represented by building digitisation and exploiting the most optimal form in documenting cultural and artistic heritage and putting it within the reach of our people and all researchers, stressing that, “at the current stage, the Directorate seeks to qualify cadres capable of introducing future generations to the heritage of our ancestors… To be more attached to it.”
Also in his speech, Oghanna touched on the importance of community participation in the digitisation process, given that our people are spread across various diaspora countries. He stated that, “technology is the safest way to communicate among our people’s communities which are spread across these countries through electronic media platforms that keep pace with the requirements of the times and mimicking its technologies.”
Oghanna explained, “We invested in technology to make films and videos covering our people’s heritage in order to preserve it from loss and extinction,” as he spoke about the Syriac Museum’s experience in digitising its important assets and documents.
This conference was attended by an elite group of researchers, academics, and activists in the field of heritage and culture in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, in addition to the director of the Syriac Heritage and Museum and a number of the museum’s employees.
