Minister of Culture Shaker Abdel-Hamid inaugurated the Revolution and Culture Conference at the Cairo Opera House, taking place from 14 to 16 April. The conference acts as a forum to explore the reasons for revolutions, how to sustain them and "how to pre-empt it, as is currently happening in Egypt," the minister says.

The conference will further discuss the path to Tahrir Square (Egypt's revolution) with an attempt to understand how the revolution came about, the creative phenomena produced by the Arab Spring, the new communication mechanisms and how to accept revolution in culture.

Secretary-General of the Supreme Council of Culture Saeed Tawfiq took the podium following the minister. "Some call what took place in Egypt last year an 'uprising' and not a 'revolution,' since a revolution gives birth to a radical change in the system, socially and culturally, which here is not the case," he explained one of the discussions in intellectual circles.

"I believe what happened is a revolution," Tawfiq stated his opinion to the large audience.

"However, the error we constantly fall into is [to believe] that the revolution happens in one moment, when in fact it produces further moments that we must seize for it to continue," he argues.

"And for the revolution to be completed, we must educate, create awareness and a change in our culture," he asserts.

Following this conference, the Cairo Opera House will host yet another revolution-related conference for four days; but this one will go back in time looking into the history of revolutions across the Arab world. 

Furthermore, Tawfiq highlighted some elements that the three-day conference will tackle, including Egypt's ongoing revolution, from the day it broke out to a year back. Then it will look forward into the creativity it produced, its connotations, its reality and its possible future innovations that are still to emerge.