Webinar on the UCCN conducted by UNESCO

Hyderabad: Recognising Hyderabad as the city of Biryanis, Kebabs, Haleem, Shikhampur and Chowki dinners, UNESCO had designated Hyderabad as a Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy in 2019. It is the only city in the country to be recognised for its rich gastronomic culture and one of the only two cities selected from India in 2019 in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) with the other being Mumbai in Film Category. The designation of Hyderabad in the creative cities’ list brought city’s rich culinary heritage and tradition into focus dating back to Pre-Islamic Kakatiya cuisines (12th century) that interacted with Turkish cuisines in the 15th century, followed by Mughal influences in the 17th century.

The focal representatives of the CoG Hyderbad include the Mayor, GHMC, Commissioner GHMC, Designated Zonal Commissioner, and various stakeholders of the culinary field as designated by the Department of Municipal Administration and Urban Development. As per the instructions and guidance of Principal Secretary MAUD, the focal team of CoG Hyderbad was requested to participate in the UNESCO webinars scheduled recently on the 15th and 17th of March 2021.

UNESCO was conducting a ‘Webinar on the UCCN’ on 17th of March to present exemplary cases on the UCCN Nomination process and application-making to encourage other aspirant cities from South Asia. In the recognition of Hyderabad's long legacy of Gastronomy culture and its efforts as a UCCN City, they had requested to present the case of Hyderabad in the session on the nomination process, so that other invited cities from across South Asia can learn from the application experience of Hyderabad.

Zonal Commissioner, Khairatabad and Main Executive from Hyderabad for the UCCN, Ms. P Pravinya delivered two presentation in this regard, one was presented on the 15th of March to the General meeting of the Cities Of Gastronomy from all across the world including Meridi, Overstrand, Phuket etc and the second for the South Asian group of cities seeking assistance in developing their dossier for the nominations of 2021 like Amritsar, Bhopal, Colombo and Gwalior. In the former, the City of Hyderabad's progress in the action plan of Hyderabad was presented along with areas where the city seeks collaboration from other Cities of Gastronomy.  In the latter, the reason for application, the process followed by the team and the overall experience of achieving the objective of the network was discussed.

Popularity of the Hyderabadi cuisine, the large socio-economic benefits of employment, synchronisation with sustainable development goals and the cultural pride and aspirations of the city as the prime reasons for applying, she spoke at length about the number of stakeholder interactions, mapping of the culinary industry and consultative meetings with focus groups as key factors that led to a successful dossier submission.

Interactions with public, private, academia and civil society professionals and 54 consultative meetings with over 20 identified partners including Hoteliers, Chef associations, Women Self-help groups, Street Vendors, Hawker associations, NGOs, food journalists, etc were carried out during the dossier preparations. Mapping the history of the culinary industry, employment generation and socio-economic background of the dependent population was also a key exercise that was undertaken to submit a well informed and detailed dossier.

Both the presentation were well-received by all the participants and UNESCO representatives particularly credited the officials for their efforts and presenting the case of Creative City of Gastronomy, Hyderabad. Several other Cities of Gastronomy of the world have reached out to collaborate and have also commended the City of Hyderbad for the inclusivity and diversity of the projects being undertaken.