في دائرة الضوء
and builds lasting relationships while maintaining the capacity to renew itself. This comprehensive approach guides all our museums.
The Role of Art and Culture in Economic Development
You recently described culture as an“ economic lever” for Africa. How is the National Foundation of Museums turning this vision into measurable action, such as creating local jobs, supporting crafts and traditional industries, or generating tangible economic returns for the regions that host museums?
We pay particular attention to our relationships with young people and educational institutions. For example, the number of school visits, educational workshops, and guided tours helps us assess the museum’ s role in transmitting knowledge, raising awareness of art, and strengthening arts education. We also don’ t overlook digital presence, which has become a natural extension of this mission. Social media activity, published content, views, and engagement rates help gauge a museum’ s ability to reach people who may be unable to visit in person. We also place great importance on internal performance, including organizational efficiency, staff engagement and training, the quality of collection care and management, and the ability to build strong partnerships. All of these are fundamental to an institution’ s sustainability and reach. Ultimately, a successful museum is not simply one that draws large numbers of visitors. It welcomes them, shares knowledge,
Culture today is a powerful lever for economic development: it helps revitalize cities and creates new opportunities. On the ground, our museums create jobs by drawing on specialists across a wide range of fields, including conservation, cultural mediation, research, restoration, and communications. They also leverage local skills and expertise by collaborating with craftspeople, service providers, and cultural practitioners. Museums also play an important role in making regions more attractive. By drawing visitors, they generate positive economic effects across the local ecosystem, from tourism and transportation to services. In this way, museums become true anchors around which economic and social momentum can build. Our ambition is to make museums spaces that are open to their surroundings, accessible to all, and engaged with their environment, contributing fully to the environment’ s vitality. Through our projects, we seek to place culture at the heart of a sustainable vision that combines heritage promotion with opportunity creation and contributes more broadly to the country’ s development. Since 2014, museum investment has been largely concentrated in a small number of flagship institutions, particularly in Rabat and Marrakech. What was the economic rationale behind this decision, and how does it affect the funding and maintenance of older or regional museums elsewhere in the network today? Broadly speaking, investment in the museum sector has been part of a broader commitment to strengthen Morocco’ s cultural appeal and to equip the country with institutions that meet international standards and keep pace with audiences’ evolving expectations. In an initial phase, concentrating a significant share of investment in specific institutions and in high-profile cities can be understood as an effort to create a catalytic effect. In particular, the aim was to establish benchmark museums that could enhance the Kingdom’ s cultural standing and generate broader momentum across the museum sector. This does not mean the other museums have been neglected. Older institutions and those in other regions naturally have specific needs for building maintenance, collection care, equipment renewal, programming, and cultural mediation— needs that may require longer-term interventions. From this perspective, the National Foundation of Museums now has a broader ambition: to enable every city and region of the Kingdom to have a museum that reflects its history, heritage, and identity. This is an important goal, and we are pursuing it through a vision that combines creating new institutions with
MATAHEF. COM 17