In January 2024, ASOF will form a new committee names “Council for Cultural Heritage Preservation”. The group will involve about 20 prominent Armenian and non-Armenian scholars in the Arts and Humanities, led by Nina Hovnanian from the ASOF Board. The group will use its international visibility to coordinate projects relating to cultural heritage in a manner to project effective Armenian soft power internationally. For the first year, the Frankfurt international book fair will be used for visibility and focal point of operations in partnership with ARI Literature Foundation led by Arevik Ashkharoyan. The initiative is targeting an annual budget of $500,000 for initiating 3-4 projects every year. For example, projects under consideration for 2024 include: a Master’s program for cultural monument renovation at NUACA through partnership with the renovation of the Ererouyk cathedral, a program for writers and translators to engage in systematic efforts for translating from and to Armenian, a center for scoring international films with the help of the Yerevan philharmonic, a research and book project on cataloguing the cultural monuments of Artsakh, and an effort to preserve local intangible culture from Artsakh through research and interviews with refugees.
