PUTRAJAYA, April 29 — The National Culture Policy (Daken) 2021 will be launched soon to drive the nation’s arts and culture industry, said Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri.

She said Daken 2021 would drive efforts towards realising the vision to make Malaysia a developed country with its wealth of a multi-cultural society while preserving and conserving the country’s cultural heritage.

She said the policy was formulated taking into account the aspiration and core elements as contained in the National Cultural Policy (DKK) 1971.

“The main objective of Daken 2021 is to create a high value cultural society through implementation of the national culture, tribal culture, heritage treasures and cultural excellence while strengthening unity, national identity and collective personality of the people,” she said in a statement here today.

Daken 2021 outlines seven main thrusts related to the future implementation of arts, culture and heritage strategies which would include high value culture, community harmony, preservation and conservation of cultural heritage, cultural development and expansion, cultural empowerment, generation of the cultural economy  and cultural excellence.

Nancy said in line with this transformation, the government had agreed that Malaysia through the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Malaysia (Motac) should contest to be included in the Unesco’s Intergovernmental Committee (IGC) for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage under the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage for the Asia Pacific group of countries in 2022.

She said so far, Malaysia has five Intangible Heritage (WTK) recognised by the convention, namely Mak Yong (2005), Dondang Sayang (2018), Silat (2019), Wangkang Ceremony (2020) jointly nominated with China and Pantun (2020) jointly nominated with Indonesia.

“Malaysia should seize the opportunity to become a member of the IGC so that the nation’s identity and visibility will continue to be highlighted at the international level. The listing of Malaysia WTK will attract more tourists to Malaysia to see for themselves the cultural heritage recognised by Unesco and this will further boost the economy and create more jobs,” she said. — Bernama