Intangible cultural heritage gaining ground at universities

How can universities integrate intangible cultural heritage in their programmes? How we get young people interested in this topic? These were some of the questions addressed at a roundtable organized on 5 December, as a side event to the 12th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage held in Jeju, Republic of Korea from 4 to 9 December.

‘It is no longer a question of whether intangible cultural heritage should be integrated in university programmes, but rather how’, stated Jyoti Hosagrahar, Director of the Division of Creativity at UNESCO, when addressing States Parties, NGOs, and experts who participated in the event. Universities have a key role to play in training administrators who will work in the area of heritage.

‘In most cases, intangible heritage is not treated as a separate subject’, analyzed Kwan Huh, Director General of the International Information and Networking Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO (ICHCAP). More frequently, we see it approached from different perspectives and across different disciplines such as anthropology, sociology and history.

Another challenge is the lack of interest from students. ‘We need to show young people that they are connected to intangible heritage, which they are often practicing without even realizing it. And, we need to make them understand that they have a key role to play in its transmission’, Annie Tohme Tabet, anthropologist and professor at Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Lebanon.

Despite the obstacles, the participants emphasized that nonetheless intangible heritage has a growing importance at universities. A study conducted by the UNESCO Office in Bangkok, Thailand in 2017 in Asia-Pacific received responses from 37 institutions in 18 countries. The survey shows that many of the disciplines related to tangible heritage (architecture, museology, etc.) are now including intangible heritage.

‘Even if we are still in the early stages in Uganda, we feel that the younger generation is starting to understand its importance. We need to show a strong link between intangible heritage and development’, insisted Barbra Babweteera, Deputy Director, Cross Cultural Foundation of Uganda.

‘We are interested in understanding the relationship between intangible cultural heritage and education in a creative and dynamic way. What is still missing is the cooperation and networking between universities’, raised Christoph Wulf, professor of anthropology and philosophy of education at the Free University of Berlin, Germany.

The UNESCO Office in Montevideo held a regional meeting on Cooperation mechanisms for intangible heritage and higher education in Buenos Aires, Argentina from 21 to 22 November, 2017. The meeting was held in cooperation with FLACSO (Latin American Social Sciences Institute), CRESPIAL (Regional Center for the Safeguarding of the ICH of Latin America) and IESALC (International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean) and the UNESCO Office in Havana, Regional Office for Culture for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Forty-three academics, managers and decision makers from thirty universities took part in the event coming from eleven countries across the region: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.
The meeting promoted exchange and reflection on intangible heritage and higher education, with a particular focus on tertiary level cultural management programmes. Participants discussed the realities, needs, experiences, specificities, and expectations of universities in relation to the teaching of intangible heritage as an academic discipline.

This event benefited from financial support from the Fund for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Photos from the event can be viewed on flickr.

UNESCO Multisectoral Office, Abuja in collaboration with the Ministry of Information and Culture organizes the final stakeholders’ meeting leading to the end of the implementation process of the project “Safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage of Nigeria through an integrated approach”. The objective of the meeting is to share the inventory reports from the three communities involved (Bida, Calabar and Oyo), with the stakeholders. In addition, the Independent Evaluator will present findings on the project implementation with recommendations for future actions to ensure the sustainability of the results of the project.

About fifty participants from government Ministries, Agencies, Civil Society, culture related Non-Governmental Organizations would participate at the meeting. Dignitaries expected at the meeting include the Ambassador of Japan in Nigeria, Ambassador of Indonesia and the Ambassador of the Republic of Korea. Others diginataries would include representatives from some United Nations Agencies, ECOWAS and British Council.

The Secretariat of the Convention organizes an information and exchange session for the members of the Intergovernmental Committee on Tuesday, 3 October 2017. This meeting will take place in Room XI (Fontenoy) from 3 to 5 p.m.

The purpose of this meeting is to inform Committee members about the functioning of the Committee and its general working methods. The Secretariat wishes to inform all members of the Committee, before its twelfth session, on the provisional agenda of the twelfth session of the Committee. The Chairperson will inform the participants of the action taken by the Government of the Republic of Korea regarding its hosting of the Committee’s next session in Jeju Island, Republic of Korea (4-9 December 2017). This information meeting is also open to interested States Parties, which are not members of the Committee and States not party to the Convention.

• Presentation of the Secretariat: English|French
• Presentation of the Republic of Korea: English|French

The city of Esquipulas, Chiquimula, hosted a training workshop on participatory inventory methodology as advocated in the 2003 Convention in the framework of the project ‘Strengthening national capacities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in Guatemala’. Thirty participants from the Ministry of Culture and Sports, local municipalities, civil society and local communities discussed both the theoretical and practical aspects of how to carry out a community-based inventory of intangible cultural heritage. Following this one-week training, a pilot inventory activity in the eastern region of Guatemala was carried out.

Training of trainers workshop for the European chapter of the global facilitators’ network

In the context of the global capacity-building programme for the effective implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, the workshop intends to expand the regional chapter of the programme’s facilitators’ network and strengthen its delivery capacity to respond to capacity-building needs in European and, in particular, Eastern European countries. UNESCO is organizing the workshop thanks to the generous support of the Regional Centre for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in South-Eastern Europe in Sofia, Bulgaria, and the funds from the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund.

The training content and methodology will take into account recommendations of the recent global programme strategy meeting held in Bangkok in March 2017. The strategy meeting highlighted the need for a stronger focus on strengthening institutional capacities at national level, the development of national networks of trainers and consideration of the changing role of facilitators, which has evolved from delivering training workshops to providing advisors, acting as mediators and as resource persons concerning all matters related to the implementation of the Convention.

Accordingly, the Sofia training workshop will: 1) analyse the lessons learned to date from implementing UNESCO’s global capacity-building programme in Europe; 2) strengthen participants’ knowledge and competencies required to be a facilitator in the network; 3) provide hands-on experience using the UNESCO capacity-building curriculum, including the recently developed materials on elaborating safeguarding plans.

Documents

• Background Note: English
• List of participants: English
• Programme: English
• Workshop objectives: English in preparation
• The UNESCO Capacity-Building Programme : English in preparation
• The Convention with a focus on the European context: English in preparation

The 5th annual meeting of the category 2 centres active in the field of intangible cultural heritage will be held from 10 to 12 September in Shiraz, Islamic Republic of Iran. Hosted by the Iranian category 2 centre under the auspices of UNESCO, the Regional Research Centre for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in West and Central Asia, the meeting will follow up on the four previous annual meetings.

Working documents

• Agenda: English
• Report of the 5th annual coordination meeting: English
• List of participants: English

Presentations

• Recent developments for the 2003 Convention and UNESCO, and objectives of the meeting: English
• Audit of the UNESCO’s Management Framework for Category 2 Centres: English
• Workplan and updates from Tehran Centre: English
• Workplan and updates from Sofia Centre: English
• Workplan and updates from CRIHAP: English
• Workplan and updates from IRCI: English
• Workplan and updates from CRESPIAL: English
• Workplan and updates from ICHCAP: English

Reference documents

• General Information: English
• Integrated Comprehensive Strategy for Category 2 Institutes and Centres
  37 C/Resolution 93: English|French|Spanish|Russian|Arabic|Chinese

For further information:

• Category 2 centres under the auspices of UNESCO

As part of the project “Support to the Effective Implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Nigeria” UNESCO’s Abuja Regional office in partnership with the Federal Ministry of Information and Culture is organizing a workshop on the preparation of nomination files to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List. Participants will be selected from the Nigeria’s Ministry of Information and Culture. They will be equipped with the capacity to prepare nomination files for inscription on the Urgent Safeguarding List (USL) and the Representative List (RL) as well as the preparation of requests for international assistance for safeguarding purposes.

The forthcoming capacity building workshop is part of UNESCO’s extrabudgetary projects generously supported by Japan Fund-in-Trust (J-FIT), in view to contribute to the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in Nigeria.

Strengthening the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage: sub-regional training workshop for facilitators from Central Asia

This training workshop is designed to equip a group of resource persons from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan with the knowledge and tools required to conduct training workshops for the effective implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Central Asia. UNESCO is organizing the training in the context of the Convention’s global capacity-building programme and as a follow-up to a previous three-year capacity-building project implemented by UNESCO in the four above-mentioned countries. The training workshop is made possible thanks to the generous support of the International Training Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO (CRIHAP) and collaboration with the National Commission of the Kyrgyz Republic for UNESCO.

The workshop intends to familiarise a core group of resource persons from the benefitting countries with the content and pedagogic approaches of some of the themes covered in the capacity-building curriculum developed by UNESCO on the implementation of the Convention at national level. It will also provide an opportunity for participants to interact with experienced facilitators on lessons learnt so far from implementing UNESCO’s global strategy, specifically with regard to Central Asia.

Documents

• Programme/ Программа: English|Russian
• Workshop Note/ Информационная записка: English|Russian
• Overview of participants answers to survey / Обзор ответов участников на опрос: English|Russian
• Introduction of the 2003 Convention and its capacity-building programme/ Представление Конвенции 2003 года и его программы по укреплению потенциала: English|Russian
• Key concepts of the Convention/ Основные понятия Конвенции: English|Russian
• Capacity-building curriculum – contents, pedagogy and the role of facilitators/ Учебная программа по укреплению потенциала - содержание, педагогика и фасилитация: English|Russian
• Identification and inventorying/ Идентификация и инвентаризация : English|Russian
• Gender and intangible cultural heritage/ Гендер и нематериальное культурное наследие: English|Russian
• Introduction of the workshop on developing safeguarding plans/ Введение в семинар по разработке планов охраны: English|Russian
• Nominations in the capacity-building curriculum/ Номинации в учебной программе по укреплению потенциала: English|Russian
• International assistance requests in the capacity-building curriculum/ Заявки на международную помощь в учебной программе по укреплению потенциала: English|Russian
• ICH and sustainable development/ НКН и устойчивое развитие: English|Russian

This activity is a continuation of the work carried out in the inventory workshop. In July and August, four working groups composed of community youth and municipal officials from Santa Apolonia, undertook fieldwork with artisanal communities. They gathered information, carried out the mapping process and established a registry of the different pottery techniques as well as associated sociocultural practices. The Municipality of Santa Apolonia submitted the final report for the Santa Apolonia pottery pilot inventory to the Ministry of Culture and Sport in August.

The capacity-building project to safeguard Guatemala’s intangible cultural heritage (ICH) continued with a training workshop on community-based inventorying that took place in Guatemala City and in Santa Apolonia from 5 to 11 June.

Organized in cooperation with Guatemala’s Vice Ministry of Natural and Cultural Heritage, the two main objectives of the workshop were to strengthen the institutional and human capacities of the western municipalities to define and identify the intangible cultural heritage present in their territory and to establish the technical capacities required to implement a pilot project on inventorying, with the participation of the local communities and non-governmental organizations.

Divided into two sections, one theoretical and one practical, the training on the basic concepts of inventorying was held in Guatemala, while the practical exercises in the field took place in the municipality of Santa Apolonia, Chimaltenango. Participants had the opportunity to perform participatory observations of local ICH elements and record them, such as the ´Torito´s dance´, local culinary traditions, weaving techniques and ceramic production.

The Intangible Cultural Heritage Section is developing new partnerships with relevant educational institutions in the context of the next quadrennial UNESCO programme (2018–2021). To this end it organized an intersectoral meeting on ‘Integrating intangible cultural heritage in education’ from 17 to 19 May 2017 at UNESCO Headquarters, which brought together 40 colleagues working in education and in intangible cultural heritage at the UNESCO Education Institutes, in Field Offices and at Headquarters.

Participants discussed the interface between intangible cultural heritage and education with special reference to the Sustainable Development Goal, Target 4.7 on learning for the ‘promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development’ to achieve Goal 4 on quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.

They shared concrete project experiences from Latina America, Africa and Asia and the Pacific on how to promote transmission and safeguarding of integrating intangible cultural heritage through all forms of education (formal, non-formal and informal). Collectively, they generated ideas for future action, including operational projects, the joint development of conceptual frameworks, policy guidance and monitoring.

The meeting was a milestone in building new partnerships between the Education and Culture Sectors.

Documents

• Meeting report: English|French
• Provisional meeting agenda: English in preparation

This workshop will provide fundamental principles and practical information on community-based inventorying, using UNESCO’s capacity-building material as a guide. The first 6 days will be ‘classroom’ style training activities aimed at conveying the essential features of inventorying under the 2003 Convention as well as developing inventory framework, and technical skills in identification and documentation. The last 4 days will be field-based practicum, carrying out inventorying work in small groups in three or four field locations. Participants will then return to the classroom to focus on organizing the data collected from the field work and to exchange experiences and consolidate their newly acquired skills.

A minimum of 25 participants is expected to participate in the workshop; five national cultural officers, five district cultural officers and 15 community members who are themselves the bearers of heritage.

The training workshop will be facilitated by one UNESCO-trained international facilitator and supported by a national expert with some knowledge of intangible heritage who will have participated in previous training workshops on safeguarding cultural heritage.

A new capacity-building project has been launched, thanks to the generous contribution of the Government of Azerbaijan. The project continues the efforts to implement the main principles of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Guatemala´s institutional structures and local social organizations.

A capacity-building workshop on the implementation of the 2003 Convention at the national level was held in Guatemala City from 3 to 7 April 2017. This marked the beginning of a series of activities being organized in close cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Guatemala throughout 2017.
The workshop involved municipal personnel from several localities of Guatemala, personnel from the Ministry, as well as representatives of civil society and communities that act as the bearers of intangible cultural heritage.

This first activity aimed to raise awareness among local and national actors about the principles, scope and objectives of the Convention, with a view to highlighting its effectiveness as a tool to guarantee the continuity of living heritage.

In January 2015, the WHO Regional Office for Europe convened its first expert group meeting on the cultural contexts of health (CCH), thereby initiating a project that seeks to build a platform for research from the health-related humanities and social sciences to support the implementation of Health 2020, the European policy framework for health and well-being. The second meeting of the expert group was convened in April 2016 to further explore how research from the humanities and social sciences can inform policy-making, and how a greater awareness of the importance of CCH can be promoted both within WHO and more broadly in the public health arena.

The purpose of this third meeting of the CCH expert group, co-organized with UNESCO on 13-14 March at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris will be two-fold. The first day will be dedicated to reviewing and inputting on the various pieces of technical work, which are currently being developed by the CCH project team. On day two, the meeting will shift towards recommending new areas of work and development for 2017, with a particular focus on research methodologies and concrete research outputs.

This is an invitation-only meeting for experts from the health related humanities and social sciences, as well as experts from public health, UNESCO, and other relevant international organizations, whose focus is on the intersection of culture, health and well-being.

Documents

• Scope and purpose: English
• Agenda: English

Within the framework of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Section’s Global strategy on strengthening national capacities to safeguard intangible cultural heritage, the Section is organizing a strategy meeting with facilitators from 6 to 9 March 2017 in Bangkok, Thailand, in collaboration with the Culture Unit of the UNESCO Bangkok Office.

Purpose:
In the process of developing the next quadrennial UNESCO programme (2018 to 2022), and in light of the latest developments in the implementation of the Convention, this workshop will intend to involve facilitators in vision building and strategic thinking about the future of the Convention’s global capacity-building programme and the facilitators’ network.

Main objectives:
1. Consolidate facilitators’ perspectives on the relevance and future potential of the capacity-building programme;
2. Assess the evolution, effects and potential of the global facilitators’ network;
3. Develop ideas and recommendations for the future of the programme and the network.

Participants:
The meeting will bring together about 30 participants, mainly UNESCO-trained facilitators involved in delivering capacity-building services as well as Field Office colleagues in the Culture Sector, and a team from the Intangible Cultural Heritage Section. The participants also include observers from Category 2 centres working on capacity building.

Documents

• Agenda of the Meeting : English|French
• Concept note: English|French
• Cross-regional Analysis of Facilitators’ Reports: English|French
• Facilitators survey results report: English|French
• Final report - Envisioning the future of the global capacity-building programme and its facilitators’ network - Strategy meeting with facilitators: English|French
• Information Note: English|French

This workshop is an activity of a two-year (2014-2016) project financed by UNESCO/Japan Fund-in-Trust, to support effective implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Nigeria. The objective of the workshop is to develop the capacities of the local community members through community-based inventorying training.

The workshop was facilitated by UNESCO-trained facilitator Silverse Anami and national facilitator Professor G.G Darah.

A similar workshop was held in Calabar from 10-14 October 2016 and Oyo from 14 – 18 November 2016.