Saudi Aramco’s iThra program attracts thousands of visitors

Saudi Aramco’s iThra Knowledge Program has attracted 300,000 visitors during the first two weeks of the event.
The program, which is being held at the city’s International Convention and Exhibition Center, was inaugurated by Riyadh Gov. Prince Turki bin Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on July 29 for its month-long run in the Kingdom’s capital city.
A spokesman from the show told Arab News that event organizers hope to have had attracted 700,000 visitors by the end of the program.
The iThra Knowledge Program is a festival of knowledge that offers everyone the opportunity to enjoy novel cultural activities and various interactive exhibits. This is the fourth such outreach program, designed and produced by Saudi Aramco’s King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture.
Successful runs in Dhahran (late 2013), Jeddah and Al-Ahsa have thus far attracted a total of more than 1.6 million visitors.
Designed to celebrate knowledge, creativity and culture, iThra Knowledge ­is one of the most successful outreach initiatives in Saudi Aramco’s history.
Created to support the company’s national strategy to enable the Kingdom’s transition to a knowledge-based society, the program hopes to impact more than 10 million people across the Kingdom by the year 2020.
Visitors to Riyadh will find new attractions, such as the “intelligent studio tent,” offered in cooperation with the San Francisco Scientific Museum, and the “inventors studio tent,” offered in cooperation with YouTube, as well as Arabic and Japanese calligraphy workshops.
Perennial crowd-pleasers include the energy efficiency pavilion, 1001 inventions and the ever-popular children’s art contest, traffic safety village, art cafe and Lego Land.
Dignitaries who visited the show on Monday included Abdullatif A. Al-Othman, governor and chairman of the Board of Directors of Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA), and Canadian Ambassador Tom Macdonald.
Macdonald said that he was proud and happy that such a show is sending out various messages to members of the public.
Energy efficiency and safe driving are two very important areas that need ample awareness, the envoy said, pointing out that the pavilion on God’s 99 names was an impressive section of the show.
He also congratulated the large team of 500 volunteers who assisted visitors.
“We saw youth dressed like different inventors and presenting themes from thousands of years ago,” he noted.
He also said that exhibitors are making sincere efforts to interact with the young ones through entertainment, which is an effective way to reach them.