The OHP concentrates on people talking about significant events in their lives during the early days of Pakistan, providing an alternative perspective to historical literature. The stories emerging from the project, the photographs and personal experiences of our rich and varied people feeds the material used in CAP Outreach Tours and cultural and educational exhibits- all of which are open and free to the public. The Project also aims to archive and preserve various records such as newspapers.
Pakistan lacks a public space and forum in which its culture and history can be disseminated. There is a great need to trace and archive the tumultuous history of the nation in a way that it can answer existential questions in the minds of the new generation of Pakistanis.There is also a lack of access to history that is not distorted.
The OHP concentrates on ordinary people talking about ordinary events, and their experiences bring a personal side to an invisible history. The OHP also lends voice to neglected people on the margins of society- whose voices have been hidden from history. We also archive and digitize newspapers, letters, official correspondences, refugee cards and passports. We use our research and findings from this project to create our interactive exhibitions and material used in our Outreach Programs.
CAP will be an extrememly valuable resource once the partition generation is gone; we will be the only organization to have their voices and a version of history that cannot be distorted. Our aim is to establish a Living History Museum of Pakistan that will allow visitors of all ages to experience the history of their nation. Our museum will house interactive multi-media exhibits drawn from the material of our rich archives, inviting visitors to touch, feel, think, and play whilst they learn.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
