I came into this degree knowing that I wanted to research on something related to Pakistan’s culture. Whether I would like to focus on cultural tourism, cultural products and handicrafts, or focus on museums and exhibitions, or anything else, I was unsure about. It was a long and worthwhile process that involved asking myself the difficult questions, speaking to people, being honest with myself about my confusions, being honest with myself about my life’s plans, thinking through things practically, and testing ideas. For instance, visiting museums and exhibitions and reflecting upon my experience brought me to the conclusion that museums is not the area I want to focus on. Similarly, visiting stores in museums and noticing my reaction as a third-person, seeing how excited I was, made me realise that products is the area that I am interested in.
This entire degree has been an introspective journey, one that I am grateful that I went on. I am happy to say that I have found a practical, tangible way to express my love for and passion to add value in supporting Pakistan’s culture, that being focusing on cultural products and handicrafts. While I do not have set plans after graduation right now and I am not planning on working on materialising my passion until I get some work experience, I am grateful to have this direction. In order to keep in touch with the cultural products field, I have made an Instagram account on which I only follow pages and businesses that are working on innovating Pakistani craft and incorporating the Urdu language in it. I will be using this Instagram account regularly in order to see what is trending in the market.
My research cautions and reminds me how niche of a market this is, but at the same time, my interviews with experts working in this space also give me hope that this is a growing market and a creative way to celebrate Pakistani culture and Urdu language. I will try to the best of my ability, to manage my passion with pragmatism, my caution with optimism, and above all, maintain my dedication to add value in this space. I thank everyone who is reading this blog. Thank you for believing in me and for your support and time. It is time to graduate from applying my imagination in an action research context to finding ways to executing my imagination in a real world context.
Onwards and upwards from here!