Ahwal Al-Ma'rifah – Special 

Do the literary clubs distributed throughout the Kingdom's regions fit with the new era's cultural, cognitive, and civilizational values and transformations?

This question has been raised frequently in the press and cultural media in the Kingdom, but the next step in change, experimentation, and implementation has not yet been determined, and literary clubs have not transformed into cultural centers to expand more of their cultural activities instead of focusing on literary types alone, to include fine arts, theater, cinema, music, folk singing, handicrafts, and fashion according to the new trends of the Ministry of Culture, which established 11 diverse cultural bodies and set (17) strategies for cultural transformation. 

Development Demands:

On every cultural occasion, the issue of developing literary clubs and transforming them into cultural centers is raised. The demands for development are not born today, but have been put forward for more than a decade, after some saw that the literary clubs, whose establishment began in 1395 AH / 1975 AD, began to exhaust the justifications for their existence after they provided various programs, activities, and publications. it is important to observe the cultural and civilizational transformations witnessed by the Kingdom, with the launch of the Kingdom's Vision 2030 five years ago, which directs culture to new destinations that work on consolidating awareness of the cultural, heritage, and cognitive diversity in the Kingdom and its historical, geographical, and tourist richness. 

Previously, Dr. Abdullah Al-Washmi presented a working paper for the Second Intellectuals Forum organized by the Ministry of Culture and Information on 1/2/1433 AH corresponding to (26/12/2011 AD) titled: "Cultural Centers," in which he raised a group of questions aimed at clarifying the idea of development, including: Does the concept of cultural centers contradict the concept of literary clubs and their activities? Do the centers represent an exceptional emergency solution? Or are they a strategic choice? Is the cultural center the geographical space and coordinating administration that gathers institutions in their current forms in one headquarters? Did the system of clubs and their regulations exhaust all their purposes? And how can cultural fields be gathered in Riyadh – for example – where there is the literary club, the culture and arts association, associations for fine artists and photographers, calligraphy, theater, stamps, and public libraries? 

Comprehensive Activities:

The demands for development are repeated always, and every year that passes at least ten articles are published on the topic of developing literary clubs. Among them is what the writer Thuraya Bella mentions: "I believe the time has come to merge literary clubs into cultural centers concerned with diverse literary, fine, artistic, and folk arts. I only say this through experience and living with literary clubs and their activities for several years. Today they have turned into something resembling social security where there is no movement in many of them except at the end of the month for the administrative staff to take their rewards, with the presence of faint activities attended only by a few, or publications for academics or their students, or poetic and story publications that fill the warehouses of many clubs and bring profits to some external publishing houses without any presence in book fairs outside the Kingdom that keeps pace with what was spent on them, which is what I noticed in more than one international book fair in some Arab capitals."

Dr. Masaad Al-Atwi rejects the idea from its foundation, and this is highlighted in the context of his saying: "We do not oppose the existence of cultural centers; on the contrary, we hope for the existence of these cultural centers, but away from the literary clubs, and the continuation of the clubs in their usual form so that they remain preserving the Arabic language and maintain its status.

The clubs must remain of high thought and high criticism and bear their responsibility in terms of the Arabic language, literary criticism, cultural criticism, and intellectual criticism with commitment to the standard Arabic language so that every person who has thought, culture, and literature belongs to the clubs. We hope for the literary clubs to exist in order to embrace the major Arabic language academies and major Arab unions located in Syria, Tunisia, and Egypt."

With these views that were put forward in the past, there are many other views that reinforce the issue of development and transforming clubs into cultural centers published by: Mohammed Reda Nasrallah, Mohammed Al-Sulaiman, Dr. Ma'jab Al-Zahrani, Dr. Mohammed Al-Safrani, Siham Al-Qahtani, Dr. Abdullah Al-Jasser, Dr. Abdulaziz Al-Aqeel, Dr. Nasser Al-Hujailan and others, which Dr. Abdullah Al-Washmi's paper refers to.

Will a development of the clubs occur?