رؤية ولي العهد.. وجامعة الرياض للفنون

The Ministry of Culture, led by His Highness Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan, continues to translate the vision of His Highness the Crown Prince in its cultural path through quality institutions. The appointment of Dr. Muhammad Hassan Alwan as the President of Riyadh University of Arts is an extension of this national project that invests in people, preserves identity, and enhances the status of culture as a civilizational and developmental force.

The vision of His Highness the Crown Prince, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for culture is based on a concept that redefines its status in the national project. Culture plays a central role in preserving identity and history, enhancing social and economic development, improving quality of life, expressing cultural diversity, bridging communication with the world, and contributing to human output.

From this awareness, culture has become a force that shapes the personality of society, preserves its memory, and opens wider horizons for expression and creativity.

Awareness is formed whenever identity finds someone to narrate its story, language finds someone to preserve its beauty, place finds someone to maintain its features, and humanity finds someone to contemplate its journey. Thus, poetry, novels, plays, melodies, paintings, and films remain open pages of the community's memory, transferring its spirit from generation to generation and granting it the ability to express itself in its cultural language.

This vision has transformed over the past years into an institutional work led by the Ministry of Culture under the leadership of His Highness Prince Badr bin Abdullah bin Farhan. The bodies have expanded, initiatives have grown, and programs have multiplied until culture has become a partner in development, present in education, quality of life, and the creative economy, and one of the pathways through which the Kingdom expresses its civilizational presence.

Riyadh University of Arts is a natural fruit of this national extension. It is an academic space where music, theater, cinema, performing arts, design, and cultural management meet, allowing talent to find its path, imagination to acquire its tools, and art to continue its mission of preserving identity and enriching life.

This expansion in the arts gives leadership a different kind of task: to build a mind that engages with creativity as knowledge, with art as a message, and with humanity as a goal. Each art has its own language and rhythm, and all come together in a project that provides talent with its tools and transforms ideas into achievements that enrich cultural life.

The novel is one of the arts that most closely engages with humanity. Years are spent by the novelist with the characters, following the transformations of time in their lives, reshaping scenes, and revising plots until the story reaches its completion. Throughout this journey, their experience of the human soul expands, and their awareness of society increases, as each character carries a different world, and each story opens a new door to understanding humanity.

The novel teaches its author that a person is broader than a single situation and that every story carries dimensions of meaning. Over time, this experience transforms into a vision that grants the idea its due reflection until it reaches maturity.

From this experience, the significance of choosing Dr. Muhammad bin Hassan Alwan to lead the university is formed. In his journey, the novel intersects with leading the Literature, Publishing, and Translation Authority, then leading the Theater and Performing Arts Authority, and the academic qualification in business management adds a dimension that enhances the ability to lead an academic institution that embraces this diversity and invests in national talents, providing them with an environment where knowledge grows alongside talent.

As this message matures, taste is renewed, cultural industries grow, intellectual property expands, and the creative economy continues to thrive, relying on knowledge and cultural production.

When the vision finds institutions to carry it, it transforms into an impact. And when talent finds knowledge, it transforms into creativity.

From this horizon, Riyadh University of Arts moves forward, the Ministry of Culture continues to build its project, and national experiences contribute to writing a new chapter of the Saudi story that carries the spirit of the place and grants future generations a language to express their homeland, with the certainty that culture builds humanity, and humanity writes the future of nations.

* Director of the Culture and Arts Association in Jeddah