Ameena Saiyid
Ameena Saiyid OBE, Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, Sitara-e-Imtiaz, is the Managing Director of Lightstone Publishers and Founder and Director of Adab Festival. She has been Managing Director of Oxford University Press Pakistan for 30 years. She is the first and only Pakistani woman awarded The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) by the British Queen in 2005. She was conferred Knight of Arts and Letters by the French government in 2013 and Sitara-e-Imtiaz by the Pakistani president in 2018.
Ameena is the first woman in Pakistan to become the head of a multinational company and to be elected President of the Overseas Investors’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry(OICCI), in Karachi.
She began the movement of literature festivals in Pakistan by founding the Karachi Literature Festival. She is the founder and director of Adab Festival Pakistan and co-founder of the Children’s and Teachers ‘ Literature Festivals.
She is on the boards of various universities in Pakistan. She is a Trustee of the Vicky Noon Education Foundation, UK, which gives scholarships to Pakistani students to study at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
SATURDAY Saturday 2nd March
میلے اور میل ملاپ Festivals As Spaces For Change For Women
Location: Hall 1
In recent years, we have seen a boom in festivals in the larger cities of Pakistan. Many of these festivals are curated by powerhouse ladies with immense knowledge to share. They have built platforms and continue to raise voices that need amplified and liven up the city's cultural landscape. Differing in festivities, demographics, and topics, these festivals have become a celebrated mainstay of our cultural calendar. How do these festivals come to be, what drives the curators, and how can audiences help sustain these festivals in the long run? This also looks at how women curate for the female demographic building in sections that will engage with all the (familial) paraphernalia that women travel with in Pakistan especially. How curating for families gets built into the conversation as that how women might move freely in these spaces.
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