King Charles’s decades’ old celebration of traditional architecture, arts and handicrafts is being embraced by the Arab world, now keen to promote their own arts and crafts in similar fashion.
This week an agreement effectively uniting the commitment of two kingdoms was signed in Riyadh. The co-operation agreement commits The King’s Foundation to participate in Saudi Arabia’s Year of Handicrafts 2025 initiative through the Foundation’s School of Traditional Arts.
The signing ceremony on Wednesday was attended by Prince Bader bin Farhan, minister of culture, at the Saudi International Handicrafts Week Exhibition in Riyadh. Khaled Omar Azzam, director of the traditional arts school at The King’s Foundation, and Hamed Fayez, deputy minister of culture, also attended the signing of the agreement, which aims to revive and promote handicrafts in Saudi Arabia throughout 2025.
The collaboration will involve training programmes in crafts in Saudi Arabia, and the launch of the ‘Regeneration of the Crafts of Saudi Arabia’ programme. For that, King Charles’s Foundation’s School of Traditional Arts will develop customised programmes.
Central to the whole initiative is King Charles’s longstanding commitment to traditional arts, architecture and crafts. It goes back a long way. The King has made headlines over the years with his criticism of modern architecture, once famously criticising a proposed extension to the National Gallery as a “monstrous carbuncle”.
Charles’s vision was to take physical form in his endorsement of Poundbury in 1993, an experimental town near Dorchester, based on traditional architecture.
This and his public statements made the present King a beacon for traditionalism in the arts. Most significantly, in 1986 he had set up a Foundation, now known a s The King’s Foundation, which has been at the forefront in the education of traditional arts, heritage and craft skills, alongside urban design and traditional architecture, much of it taking place at Charles’s country residence, Highgrove in Gloucestershire. A key component of the courses is placing people and communities involved at the centre of the design process.
He has urged communities not to lose the dwindling skills that shaped the built environment and prevent specialist trades from disappearing “at an alarming rate”.
He has also said, in what is effectively a mission statement when he brought his relevant charities together to be based at Dumfries House: ”My hope is that by creating a place where we can teach building, design, textile and Stem [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] skills alongside food and farming education programmes, we can begin not only to create the vocational capacity to protect, regenerate and re-use our historic heritage, but also to create our future heritage, and to inspire a new generation to adopt healthier and more sustainable ways of living in their communities.”
The Saudis appear to share King Charles’s vision of protecting, promoting and developing traditional arts and crafts. A spokesman for the Saudi ministry of Culture said after the signing this week: “The primary goal is to regenerate and renew Saudi craft traditions across different regions of The Kingdom.”
The agreement between the Saudi Ministry of Culture and The King’s Foundation school is part of the national culture strategy under the umbrella of Saudi Vision 2030, which aims to transform the Saudi economy and diversify its social and cultural life.
