A one-day seminar in 2019 on “Conservation and Local Development” shed new light on the intersection between discourses of sustainable development and conservation. It was organised by the Faculty of Architecture at CEPT University, Ahmedabadon behalf of the AKTC Education Programme.

The seminar accompanied the month-long showing at CEPT’s Lilavati Lalbhai Library of two AKTC exhibitions, the first covering the 2019 cycle of Aga Khan Award for Architecture and the second devoted to various projects of the Aga Khan Historic Cities Programme (AKHCP).

Eminent conservation practitioners addressed the following overarching question: what would conservation practice look like if it fully addressed all the challenges of local sustainable development?

As several of these experts observed, the AKHCP already provides an excellent demonstration of urban conservation and regeneration projects that improve the quality of life of historic city inhabitants while also promoting models that sustain these improvements.

A panel discussion moderated by CEPT faculty member Professor Kaiwan Mehta debated the interactions between architectural awards and architectural practice in the light of the experience of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture.

The same two AKTC exhibitions were subsequently presented at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture and Environmental Studies (KRVIA) in Mumbai in2020. Inaugurating the exhibitions, Professor Aneerudha Paul, KRVIA’s director, stressed the power of visual imagery to convey conceptual messages and urged students to explore this imagery as a learning tool.

The exhibitions were well received by students as well as more than 1,000 external visitors including groups of architecture students along with faculty members from other cities.

KRVIA conducted a guided tour of the exhibitions and an interactive session for nearly 50 school pupils from the Mumbai Ismaili Tariqah and Religious Education Board (ITREB). Architect Sandeep Menon, Core Faculty KRVIA, led walkthroughs of the exhibitions and emphasised the transformative changes brought about by the AKHCP. The exhibition venues doubled up as spaces for debate, discovery and enlightenment.

In 2018, the Master’s Degree in International Heritage Management at Durham University in the UK offered students a two-hour seminar sharing the experiences of the Historic Cities Programme’s Cairo Project, encompassing its approach as well as the lessons learned.

AKTC Consultant Seif El Rashidi gives this seminar, generally each December, under the aegis of AKTC Education. The Master’s programme attracts an international cohort of 20-30 students from around the world and is tailored to those wishing to pursue or further their careers in heritage management. A major art of the programme's appeal is its international scope, which makes seminars like this one particularly relevant.

An exhibition on the AKHCP and a special Plenary Session that contextualised the exhibit’s 28 panels were highlights of the International Conference on Heritage Management Education and Practice organised by Ahmedabad University’s Centre for Heritage Management in 2018. The conference theme was “Developing Integrated Approaches”.

The work of AKHCP is germane to this agenda since it uses architectural conservation as a springboard for wider-reaching and long-lasting urban regeneration initiatives that focus as much on education, training and job creation as they do on conserving the built heritage.

AKTC Education Director Professor Raj Isar opened the first plenary session with an overview of AKHCP activities across the world. Dr Ashraf Botros, who headed the technical team that worked on the Darb al-Ahmar Rehabilitation Project in Cairo, explored different dimensions of the Cairo project, while Dr Ashoke Chatterjee, a distinguished cultural leader and conservationist and a former director of the National School of Design, offered a critical counterpoint.

Some 100 participants, many of them students, from Australia, Bangladesh, Egypt, France, Greece, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Sudan, Tunisia, the UK, the USA and Zimbabwe, took part in the conference. Keynote speakers were Dr Webber Ndoro, Director-General of ICCROM, and Ms Sushma Iyengar, a leading Indian cultural activist, who shared her experiences and initiatives on community-based integrated rural development in Kutch, Gujarat.

In 2018, the Education Programme and the New Delhi Office of the AKTC co-organised a pan-Indian seminar in New Delhi for students designed to introduce them to the basic values, principles and practice of the AKCHP. The 112 participants included students from 37 different architectural schools, as well as professionals.

Seminar instructors included James Wescoat, Aga Khan Professor of Landscape Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Shiraz Allibhai, Deputy Director of the Trust, Ratish Nanda, CEO of the New Delhi Office and his colleagues Jyotsna Lall and Shveta Mathur. Indian experts contributing to the training were the landscape architect Yogesh Kapoor, publisher Umesh Anand and architects Pankaj Vir Gupta, Professor K T Ravindran, Dr Kaiwan Mehta and Professor A G K Menon.