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.

The three countries of North Africa, Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, benefited from a program to safeguard the intangible cultural heritage through the strengthening of national capacities implemented by the UNESCO Office in Rabat between 2013 and 2015 thanks to funding from Norway. This program resulted in three workshops organized in each of the countries concerned on: (i) the implementation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention (IMP); (ii) Participatory Inventory with Communities (INV); and (iii) the preparation of nominations for inclusion in the Convention Lists (NOM).
The second phase of this program is implemented by UNESCO in the three countries with funding from Catalonia between 2017 and 2018. It intends to deepen the capacity building on other themes but also support the policy of Tunisia in this domain. These are: (i) a workshop in each of the three countries on the development of safeguarding plans; (ii) a workshop in each of the three countries on the preparation of international assistance requests; and (iii) support to Tunisia for the development of a national strategy for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage.

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: الإنجليزية|الفرنسية
• Presentation of the Republic of Korea: الإنجليزية|الفرنسية

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: الإنجليزية
• List of participants: الإنجليزية
• Programme: الإنجليزية
• Workshop objectives: الإنجليزية قيد الإعداد
• The UNESCO Capacity-Building Programme : الإنجليزية قيد الإعداد
• The Convention with a focus on the European context: الإنجليزية قيد الإعداد

From April 3rd to 13th 2017, a UNESCO led ‘Community-based Inventorying Training Workshop for Strengthening National Capacities for Implementing the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Eritrea’ was undertaken. Participants were from community members across the country, from the nine cultural groups and Director Generals or regional authorities on culture from the six administrative regions. The workshop, which was led by an international expert (Dr Lovemore Mazibuko) with support from a national expert (Dr Senait Bahta) enabled the participants to achieve the approaches and methods for inventorying ICH. After the workshop, the trainees were assigned the responsibility to train community members in the regions they represent.

Following the workshop, a work plan for fieldwork on inventorying ICH in all the nine cultural groups was drafted by the Cultural Affairs Bureau, an international expert and national expert. As per the advice of the international expert, it was appropriate to begin inventorying fieldwork with a few elements from each cultural group, rather than focus on only one group in order to allow all participants to practice the community based inventory techniques they had learned during the workshop. Two elements of ICH from each of the nine cultural groups were selected with the assistance of community members, Director Generals for Culture in each of the six zone administrative offices. The National expert formed Regional teams of at least five in a team to lead the inventorying work in each of the nine culture groups. The team formed consisted of a local language speaker, (who is the interviewer), a note taker, a sound recorder and audiovisual expert.

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

Presentations

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

Reference documents

• General Information: الإنجليزية
• Integrated Comprehensive Strategy for Category 2 Institutes and Centres
  37 C/Resolution 93: الإنجليزية|الفرنسية|الإسبانية|الروسية|العربية|الصينية

For further information:

• Category 2 centres under the auspices of UNESCO

The current report results from the needs assessment that was carried out in September-December 2017 on the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The assessment was guided by the intention to explore the legislative and policy documents in the sphere of ICH in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to analyze the institutional and administrative framework for the implementation of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention, and to study the situation of awareness-raising activities, inventorying procedures, and educational and training programs on ICH issues in the country. The goal was to outline the major challenges encountered in the implementation of the 2003 Convention on the national level, to identify the main needs in the field of ICH safeguarding, and to propose recommendations for improvement, with a special attention to aspects of urgency, sustainability, and long-terms effects. The needs assessment will enable to tailor further actions within the framework of UNESCO global capacity-building strategy for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, especially by using the opportunity to elaborate requests for international assistance from the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund, established under the 2003 Convention.

The Capacity Building Workshop on the Implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and Community-based ICH Inventorying in Tuvalu took place at the Conference Room of the Government Building in Funafuti from 24 to 29 July 2017 and was the first of its kind to be held in-country. The Workshop was organized by the Tuvalu Ministry of Home Affairs and Rural Development (MHARD) and the Tuvalu National Commission for UNESCO (NATCOM) with funding from the Rei Foundation via UNESCO (Apia) Office. The Workshop brought together 40 participants (23 male and 17 female, including 11 youth 15 – 24 years old). They are from government (14), community leaders (7), representatives of the Women’s’ Council and the Youth Council of 8 islands that make up Tuvalu. The Workshop was facilitated by Mr. Sipiriano Nemani, Director of the Fiji Museum and UNESCO accredited ICH trainer and Ms. Akatsuki Takahashi, Programme Specialist for Culture, UNESCO Office for the Pacific States.

This workshop is related to the development of safeguarding plans and aims at developing and strengthening the capacities of representatives of different governmental and non-governmental organizations, institutions, communities and other specialists to ensure that these stakeholders are able to master this issue. central aspect of the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. At the end of this workshop, participants will have gained in-depth knowledge of the Convention oriented towards safeguarding and a good understanding of the concept of safeguarding ICH, as advocated by the Convention and its Operational Guidelines. They will also know why and how the communities, groups and individuals involved should be the main actors involved in the design and implementation of all ICH safeguarding activities and understand how to prepare coherent and good safeguarding plans. quality, taking into account the interests of each other. They will also be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the ICH safeguarding plans and will have the basic techniques and methodologies for carrying out safeguarding plans that can meet the needs of their ICH. This will undoubtedly help the State Party and the communities concerned to better manage the various aspects related to the implementation of the Convention.

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

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.

In the National Database for Information, Registration and Documentation of Mongolia in overall number are registered 8066 ICH practitioners and 177 ICH elements. The practitioners number in above mentioned database from Eastern Region or namely from Khentii, Dornod and Sukhbaatar provinces are in total 580, which means it covers only 7.2%. Besides, there are very few number of ICH practitioners and ICH elements, which are belongs to certain ethnic groups who are settled in Khentii, Dornod and Sukhbaatar provinces, namely from ethnic groups such as Uzemchin, Barga, Khamnigan, Buriad and Dariganga.
Therefore, with a view to ensuring bottom-up approaches (notably the active participation of practitioner communities) to safeguarding and inventorying ICH we aimed to carry out a pilot inventory in Eastern area of Mongolia. In these are, namely Khentii, Dornod, Sukhbaatar provinces, where the ICH research and inventorying is respectively not so strong and settled by several ethnic groups as a minorities and diverse ICH, such as Khamnigan, Buriad, Bargut (Barga), Uzemchin, Dariganga.
In framework of ICH inventorying was undertaken on following programmes:
A. Organize methodological training for the local officers and practitioners on ICH Safeguarding and Inventorying ICH.
B. Field ICH Elements Inventorying and Documentation of Buriad, Bargut (Barga), Uzemchin, Dariganga and Khamnigan ethnic groups.
C. Promote knowledge and practice of community-based approaches in ICH inventorying.

The training workshop was organized from 26 to 28 May 2017 in Beni Mellal with the participation of 23 people. As at the Tabarka workshop (Tunisia), it was necessary to add an introductory presentation on the Convention and its key concepts to enable participants who had not taken part in previous workshops to become acquainted with the main lines of this instrument. normative and the requirements of its implementation. Due to the large number of these, questions and clarifications have been asked, especially by academics and NGO members. On the other hand, those who participated in all or part of the four workshops (IMP, INV, NOM and AI) were able to have a partial or global idea, as the case may be, of the process of safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage. The big challenge they highlighted is related to the participatory process of implementation. It can be said that participants gained (i) knowledge of the 2003 Convention, (ii) an overview of a failed international assistance request, and (iii) the methodology for assessing requests for international assistance. All have understood that good demand is expressed in a straightforward and straightforward language, that coherence should govern all sections, that the balance between activities / budget / timetable should be ensured and that, above all, it must have been prepared with the participation of the largest number of stakeholders, the most important of which are the communities, groups and individuals concerned.

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: الإنجليزية|الفرنسية
• Provisional meeting agenda: الإنجليزية قيد الإعداد

This field exercise was organized in May 2017 by the National Commission for UNESCO with the support of the Biblioteca National de Aruba and Stichting Rancho. Aruba chose to focus on the traditional craftsmanship behind the making of miniature boats. Those trained (20 persons – 13 females and 7 males) represented a  cross-section of researchers from state agencies responsible for documenting Aruban heritage, academia, community associations and the Ministry of Culture. 

This activity took place in May and June 2017 with a total of 19 participants (13 females and 6 males). The exercise was organised by the Bonaire UNESCO Work group in collaboration with the NGO Fundashon Historiko Kultural di Boneiru (FUHIKUBO) which has been documenting the intangible heritage of Bonaire and the Dutch  Caribbean. Bonaire chose to continue more in‐depth inventorying of the traditional healing practice of haladó and the use of herbs. A booklet to build awareness of the intangible heritage of Bonaire will also be developed  for the general public and use in schools. 

The ICH Committee, through the Sint Eustatius Historical Foundation, again focused its reinforcement field exercise on Sint Eustatius (Statia) string band music, specifically the traditional making of the various musical instruments. By continuing to focus on Statia string band music, but another component, the Committee hoped to build on the awareness generated from the previous field exercise. Youth were again an important component of this, and carpentry students were brought on board to learn the traditional way of making these  instruments. 25 females and 10 males took part in this activity. 

Through the Directorate of Culture, representatives from all the umbrella cultural organizations were invited to this activity. The activity focussed on the Use of the Bita as a medicinal plant. Participants were introduced to the ICH Convention and the importance of inventorying. Suriname is also developing a strategy, which will  see these persons who were recently trained, to work in their own local communities to inventory ICH and to train others in their community to do the same. Participants included 4 males and 19 females.

In April 2017, a joint training involving the Dutch Caribbean islands and Suriname was delivered on mechanisms for international cooperation under the 2003 Convention, focusing on preparing nominations to the various Lists of the Convention, regional cooperation and preparing requests to the ICH Fund. Twenty‐three participants were present from all territories. The occasion was presented for the various territories to discuss how they could deepen collaboration with each other and Suriname indicated its wish to ensure a deepening of collaboration, particularly as it relates to inventorying of shared elements. 

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.

Sint Maarten directed its training at high school students, who worked with persons who made traditional deserts and drinks. Three training sessions were held with youth to include 27 females and 6 males, who worked along with the ICH Committee and 9 practitioners. 

Under this project, Fiji organized 4 training workshops, gathering 113 participants, half of them being women.

Case studies presented by local practitioners as well as a panel discussion enriched the workshop on the implementation of the Convention (September 2015). This set-up allowed this first workshop to be well grounded in the reality of Fiji and encouraged the active participation of stakeholders. Several members of chiefdom status attended the event and reiterated the need to include ICH safeguarding on the permanent agenda of high-level meetings in each district and province.

The workshop on community-based inventory (February 2016) analysed and built up on successful past initiatives such as the inventorying and mapping projects carried out in the past in Fiji. Staff from the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs co-facilitated sessions on the technical aspects of ICH inventorying (e.g. taking photos and videos). Participants documented 5 elements during a field trip to Nabukaluka village: eel fishing method, traditional chants, food preparation, house construction techniques, and oral history. In preparation, the community was consulted as early as December 2015 following a locally accepted process and authorized the participants to come to their village to contribute to the documentation of the local ICH.
The workshop on developing safeguarding plans for ICH (October 2017) complemented the theoretical role-play with the analysis of 3 Fijian elements: Vakamalolo tradition sitting meke (dance) of the Tui Lawa people of Yanuya; salt making traditions from Lomawi village, and the making of traditional fishing nets of the Sawau people of Beqa. Several practitioners shared their knowledge of selected elements so that participants could practice developing safeguarding plans. The practical value of this exercise was a strong motivating factor for participants. The capacity-building cycle was completed with the workshop on the preparation of nominations to the lists of the Convention (February 2017).

Finally, the Fijian team consolidated its learning by undertaking the pilot community-based documentation of the meke dance.

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: الإنجليزية
• Agenda: الإنجليزية

The workshop was organized by the Regional Centre in Sofia for the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage in South-Eastern Europe under the auspices of UNESCO and the Ministry of culture of Republic of Montenegro. The workshop was dedicated to the preparation of nominations for inscription in the UNESCO lists and included presentations on these issues and practical activities for preparing nominations for elements of intangible cultural heritage.
The workshop took place almost 6 years after the UNESCO workshop dedicated to community-based inventorying and 4 years after the completion of subsequent inventorying campaign carried out by relevant institutions and coordinated by The Ministry of culture of Montenegro. Demonstrating the steps that institutions in Montenegro are taking in implementing the Convention on a national level, the workshop this year benefited from the previous experience, as it involved participants who had part in training and inventorying work before.

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

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.

The UNESCO Sri Lanka Policy Mission that took place from 23 to 27 January 2017 had as its objective the provision of advice and recommendations to the Government of Sri Lanka on possible policy/legal framework and action plan for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) in its national territory.