Annually, each city’s plans are judged and one city is introduced as Iran’s Book Capital.
So far, Ahvaz, Neyshabur, Bushehr, and Kashan have been the Book Capital, respectively. In 2019,Yazd is the Book Capital. Iran’s Book Capital is the title of a plan in Iran according to which a city is annually selected as Iran’s Book Capital. Some parts of this plan have been modeled on the World Book Capital; however it has become largely consistent with the cultural situation in Iran in terms of its executive structure. In the first year when cities in Iran competed for the title of Book Capital, Ahwaz earned the title with the participation of NGOs such as the Citizenship Education Center for Development (CECD). In the second year, Neyshabur was given the title. Since 2001, UNESCO has annually bestowed the title of World Book Capital to a city which has made a great deal of effort to strengthen the place of reading.
UNESCO aims to launch cultural programs related to book-reading, thereby create a passion for reading among people. This selection has no financial prize for the selective ones, but it is recognition of the best program devoted to books and reading. In the first festival, 64 cities with 390 plans responded to the recall and requested for the title of Iran’s Book Capital. After some formal evaluations, ten cities reached the final stage and were presented to the jury. Considering the objectives and the evaluation indicators, the jury nominated Yazd, Bushehr, Gonbadkavos, Neyshabour and Ahvaz as the final nominees for the festival. Finally, according to the jury’s statement, the Book Capital of Iran, Ahwaz, due to presenting innovative, participatory, effective, and coherent programs and utilizing the capacities of the private sector, popular organizations, industries, sports and cultural centers, was bestowed the Certificate of Appreciation by the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance and the UNESCO National Commission.
In the second festival, 99 cities participated and Neyshabur was selected as the second Iran’s Book Capital and Bushehr, Shiraz, Yazd, Shahrekord and Ray City were nominated for the title of Iran’s Book Capital. The most important reason for executing this program is to provide coordination and cooperation among various governmental and non-governmental organizations active in small towns in book-related activities. The designers and executives of this program believe that such projects can help increase the per capita reading among citizens.
It is also justified that the Iran’s Book Capital plan is the first national experience for Iran in this field and that this experience will, over time, bring them closer to the universal criteria of selecting the Book Capital. Iranian cultural officials point out that their criteria are more defined nationally and based on local structures and capacities. The Iran’s Book Capital plan has several objectives based on which the book capital is selected. They are defined as follows:
- increasing the cooperation and participation of various governmental and non-governmental institutions in the field of book;
- attracting funds from the private sector;
- making the various industrial, economic … sectors more cultural;
- indirectly promoting foresight and planning in the field of culture;
- Supporting new and innovative ideas in the field of books;
- Decentralizing the cultural programs and promoting cultural justice;
- Promoting book-reading;
- Designing attractive and popular book programs;
- Promoting the cultural management position in
The cities selected as the book capital in the past years are Ahvaz, 2015; Neyshabur, 2016; Bushehr, 2017; Kashan, 2018; Yazd, 2019.
