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fter launching a number of ambitious infrastructure projects, President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo is now turning to the softer part of development: arts and culture.

The Jokowi government is currently drafting a kind of national strategy on cultural development it says will play an important role in building the country.

Indonesia is rich with various cultures, but many of its local traditions have slowly disappeared.

The President has ordered newly-appointed Culture and Education Minister Muhadjir Effendy and Creative Economy Agency head Triawan Munaf to immediately formulate what they call “a national strategy on cultural development”.

The purpose of this strategy was to “bring a kind of balance to the country,” Muhadjir said on Wednesday, adding that one of the planned moves was to have art and culture as cocurricular activities in schools.

Jokowi has been focusing on massive infrastructure and economic development across the country since he took office almost two years ago. Only recently did the President seem to have paid attention to other aspects of development.

On Tuesday, the President invited a number of figures representing local movie industry, like producers, directors and actors into a lunch aimed at listening to their aspirations on film and creative industry, as well as cultural development of the country.

At that time, majority of his guests demanded for what they deemed as “policy on culture”, while some indeed called for promoting movie education in schools through extracurricular activities, if not, incorporating it into the existing formal education in schools.

“I can do drum band [marching band] since there was an extracurricular [activity of marching band at my school],” said movie director Hanung Bramantyo, who were among Jokowi’s guests on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, actor and stand-up comedian Ernest Prakasa said movies can be tools to send positive messages like pluralism, nationalism and many more.

A similar meeting between Jokowi and a number of cultural observers, artists and writers, like playwright Radhar Panca Dahana and writer Ahmad Tohari, was also held at the National Gallery last week.

“It is about how to bring a balance between hard infrastructure development and soft [cultural] development,” said Jokowi at that time, highlighting the needs to bring back public enthusiasm on literature and to improve cultural diplomacy.

The 2017 state budget plan does not specifically mention about allocation for cultural development. But, in the 2017 state budget plan, the education ministry receives around Rp 39.8 trillion (US$2.99 billion), of which around Rp 1.87 trillion is located for cultural preservation program and Rp 403 billion for language and literature development program. While the Creative Economy Agency gets around Rp 946 billion, of which Rp 772 billion is for creative economic development program.

The President had also heard similar inputs voiced by a number of artists, including also Radhar, and intellectuals like philosopher Franz Magnis-Suseno as he invited them to a lunch at the State Palace late last year.

An effort to send a message that local wisdom and tradition play part in developing industry had actually started over the weekend as Jokowi brought a sheep contest, which is often held by local sheep farmers in many areas in Garut region of West Java, into the Bogor Palace.

Such contest involving traditional music and performances is believed to have been helping those farmers in growing their livestock industry.