The Citizens Archive of Pakistan has curated an exhibition on ‘Media and Culture Through the Ages in Pakistan’, featuring historic photographs from Pakistan Television and Radio Pakistan, in collaboration with the Google Cultural Institute to share its archives at home and abroad. Indeed, as of March 2014, The Citizens Archive of Pakistan became the first Pakistani organization to work with the Google Cultural Institute.
The Google Cultural Institute (GCI) is an initiative that aims to help people create, preserve and promote culture and heritage by making related content accessible around the world through its digital platforms. GCI has partnered with hundreds of museums, cultural institutions and archives, a few of which are the Museum of Modern Art, National Women’s Hall of Fame and the National Archives of the Netherlands, to host the world’s cultural treasures online.
Since its inception in 2007 The Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP) has focused its attention on storytelling, which inspired CAP’s Oral History Project (OHP) through which the memories of a generation that experienced partition and the early years of Pakistan are recorded. CAP aims to create Pakistan’s first Living History Museum, which will house the oral histories of thousands of individuals who have experienced partition and have witnessed the early years of Pakistan, along with photographs from Pakistan’s past. As CAP continues to work towards this goal, partnering with the Google Cultural Institute is the first step for CAP to disseminate its archives to the rest of the world, and share Pakistan’s heritage and culture online.