EuropeAid“Cultural Heritage & Management Venture Lab” en Ahmedabad, India

Abstract

The Europe Union funded project “Cultural Heritage & Management Venture Lab” in Ahmedabad, India appears as a result of the optimal international relations between India and Spain cultivated in the last years. An international cooperation project pretends to strengthen 0the capacities of the cultural actors and promote an environment for creativity, innovation, professionalization and entrepreneurship in the cultural and heritage management to allow the people of Gujarat to fully benefit from the cultural heritage potential as an economic value. Ahmedabad is the major urban centre of the state of Gujarat, situated on the North West, and it is the fifth largest city in India. Gujarat has the largest business corporations in the country, and the economical and entrepreneurial culture of Gujarati citizens has led this State to be considered as one of most dynamic states in India. The potential derived from the appropriate combination of its economic strength and its cultural heritage wealth would offer great opportunities for the development of the cultural sector, contributing to a further economic progress and a sustainable growth in key areas of the city that would benefit an important section of its population. The contemporary degradation of the traditional environment can be attributed to numerous factors, being the most outstanding the high population density, the collapse of textile production in the 1980s, the shift in the production systems or the traffic congestion. Despite of the various and pioneering efforts to create awareness on heritage and to encourage its preservation, there are still many inner city areas of Ahmedabad that have become marginalized in the process of urban growth and regeneration, which has led to their decay and economic dilapidation. Consequently, the migration of the population to newer areas is been producing and, at the same time, this is having negative repercussions on the historical urban preservation. The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, Ahmedabad University and local volunteers continue to explore the ways to institutionalize and popularize the heritage restoration and promotion. One such effort has led to the collaboration between the municipal corporations and the universities of Ahmedabad and Valladolid. The University of Valladolid had already collaborated with Ahmedabad University, undertaking preliminary studies in the old city and defining the potential risks on cultural heritage. The project funded by the European Union not only address these problematic issues, but also pretends to create a permanent private-public cluster to promote new policies and create new cultural industries in the heritage sector that contribute to the economic growth, the heritage preservation and the improvement of social awareness and livelihood in the inner areas of Ahmedabad.