LAHORE: National College of Arts (NCA) alumni plan to conserve the historic Bhai Ram Singh building of the college.
Initially, the alumni will begin minor conservation work to save the 100-year-old building from decaying. The immediate conservation work to be done is to fix new drains, bricks and restoration of broken or missed panels.
The estimated cost of the conservation project is Rs1.3 million but alumni plan to complete the project without spending any money, says NCA Principal NCA Sajjad Kausar.
He said he asked the old students to help conserve the historic building as they not only knew the fabrics of the building but also had a strong affiliation with their institution.
The bricks used in the building are not commonly available in the market. The college building has designed bricks with a lotus flower shape on them. Mr Kausar said that they had asked some artisans in Multan to produce the bricks to be used in conservation. Some sample bricks made by the artisans have been approved by the college. The artisans would fix the structure with plain kankar lime were also from Multan, he added.
College students are happy at the launch of the project. They say the self-help project will inspire other government institutions to initiate such projects.
The college students will also help in the project. They plan to celebrate March 8 as an environmental awareness day under the slogan ‘Make NCA Clean and Green’.
The students will clean the blackish leftovers with hard brushes from walls of the building. The work will introduce the idea as how to segregate waste in different bins. The college plans to place three bins in each part of the college to put waste such as bottles, plastic bags and wrappers of eatables.
The NCA, formerly known as Mayo School of Industrial Art, was set up to commemorate Lord Mayo, the British Viceroy to India, assassinated in 1872. A teacher of painting and sculpture Lockwood Kipling, working then in Bombay in a Parsi School, was appointed its first principal parallel to his charge of the curator of the Lahore Museum.The museum and the school were conceived together. Funds were raised through a special levy throughout the Punjab province on the occasion of the Jubilee of the British Queen in 1887.
The object was to provide an institution containing a museum, a library and a number of lecture rooms where instructional staff would teach indigenous crafts.
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