House of Heritage is a not-for-profit cultural centre in Khartoum, established in 2016 by Dr Ismail El-Fihail. The centre’s aim, through pioneering high-quality capacity building, is to enhance the Sudanese national identity by preserving and protecting the Sudanese heritage, and increasing cultural awareness of the various ways of life. This works towards establishing mutual respect, tolerance and understanding amongst different cultural groups in Sudan, to achieve lasting peace and sustainable development.
House of Heritage provides training to students, government and private sector employees and NGOs working in the field of heritage, art and culture, in addition to communities, various groups and researchers. These trainings focus on a number of key areas, such as various tangible and intangible cultural heritage, languages and translation, cultural industries and tourism, computer science and information technology, various business activities and management. Further to core trainings, House of Heritage hosts a number of other activities, such as cultural events, film screenings, lectures, exhibitions, open air public library, bookstore and book exchange, and a heritage themed public café.
Having catered to such a range of activities and social and cultural groups, House of Heritage has established its own community network and vibrant social life, and is now a highly valued community resource.
House of Heritage has collaborated with Sudan Memory since 2019, to help shape key focus areas for the second phase of the project. Furthermore, to help connect Sudan Memory with existing local community networks, to collaboratively identify key heritage topics, themes and current issues and how the project could seek to address these. Some sample collections contributed from House of Heritage to Sudan Memory, for example the documentation of the intangible heritage of the annual ceremony of the Al-Sharifa Mariam Al-Mirghanya in the city of Sinkat, are available here to view.