It was a great trip at Rohingya Cultural Memory Center (RCMC) with my best colleagues….These are, Rohingya photographers(1) photographer Abul Kalam(2) photography Md HassanBest regard. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) and the Rohingya community have jointly launched the Rohingya Cultural Memory Centre (RCMC), a multidisciplinary initiative which provides an online community space, interactive gallery, digital archive, and web-based exhibition, and one of the first significant attempts to comprehensively document and preserve the heritage of the Rohingya people.There are currently nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees living in Cox’s Bazar camps, inhabiting challenging settlements with limited avenues for expression. The RCMC offers psychosocial support through art therapy, protection and skills development activities led by IOM practitioners and mental health officers.In 2019, IOM researchers in Cox’s Bazar started collecting and documenting cultural practices and objects shared amongst the Rohingya community from the Rakhine State in Myanmar. The centre tells the story of the Rohingya people through a comprehensive collection of cultural artefacts and artworks researched and produced by Rohingya refugee artists living in the camps. These efforts produced a thorough ethnographic map, detailing activities central to the Rohingya identity.By providing the Rohingya community with the tools and platform to tell their story, the RCMC addresses the “identity crisis” named by three-quarters of the refugees as a key factor in their loss of well-being. The RCMC strives to function as a vehicle that preserves and enhances their rich culture, contributing towards strengthening the collective identity of the Rohingya population.“The centre provides us with a platform to maintain our Rohingya culture and traditions,” said Shahida Win, a Rohingya poet and researcher with RCMC. “It gives us an opportunity to express our creativity, aspirations, memories and feelings through our arts.”The collection is a portrait of a culture reflecting on its past, present and future, exploring the tensions between tradition and

Leave a comment

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started