Board of Trustees of Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature reconstituted

Muscat: Sayyid Khalid Hilal Al Busaidi, Minister of the Diwan of Royal Court, issued a decision reconstituting the Board of Trustees of the Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature under his chairmanship, with the Minister of Information as Vice Chairman and the Chairman of the Sultan Qaboos Higher Centre for Culture and Science as Secretary to the Board.

The decision stipulated the membership of a group of Omani and Arab intellectuals and academics, namely: Prof. El Sayed Saber El Sayed El Masry; Prof. Mohammed Ali Al Balushi, Professor of Heritage Management at the Department of Archaeology, College of Arts and Social Sciences at Sultan Qaboos University; Dr. Ahmed Yousif, Associate Professor of Arabic Language at the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, College of Arts and Social Sciences at Sultan Qaboos University; and Dr. Nasser Hamad Al Taee, Advisor to the Board of Directors of the Royal Opera House Muscat.

The decision included a number of tasks and competencies assigned to the Board, including formulating the general policy of the Award and ways to develop it, setting dates for nominations and announcing the winners, and approving the screening and jury committees.

It is worth noting that the Sultan Qaboos Award for Culture, Arts and Literature was established by Royal Decree No. (18/2011) in support of the culture, art, and literature movement inside and outside the Sultanate of Oman, and to honor intellectual figures for their valuable contributions.

Since the launch of its first edition in 2012, the Award has sought to actively contribute to revitalizing the cultural movement locally and abroad through various programs and activities in cooperation with relevant institutions.

The competition fields for the Award in its current 13th edition have been specified as family and childhood studies in the Sultanate of Oman (for the Culture branch), Arabic calligraphy (for the Arts branch), and the short story (for the Literature branch), with the winners expected to be announced next November.