Meetings on intangible cultural heritage (co-)organized by UNESCO

This activity took place in May and June 2015 with a total of 22 participants (14 females and 8 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. Additional expertise was provided by the Bonaire UNESCO Work group (ICH Committee) who had all attended previous workshops (IMP and INV), and Rose Mary Allen, an anthropologist from Curaçao. Bonaire focussed its inventorying exercise on practitioners of traditional Bonaire music, haladó (traditional healing) and maskarada. Participants represented cultural foundations, the Ministry of Culture and migrant communities in Bonaire (Venezuelan and Colombian).

A stakeholder’s workshop on Eritrean Cultural and Natural Heritage Legislation took place on 26 and 27 May 2015 in Asmara organized by the Cultural Affairs Bureau and the Asmara Heritage Project in coordination with UNESCO Nairobi Office. Workshop participants were Eritrean experts who represented stakeholder institutions such as the National Museum of Eritrea, National Commission of Eritrea for UNESCO, Research and Documentation Centre, Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of Energy and Mines, Department of Religious Affairs, Eritrean Institute of Technology, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Eritrean Police and the School of Law.

Prior to the workshop, a local expert was contracted to collect information on existing legal, policy and institutional frameworks. The workshop was facilitated by Mr Silverse Anami, a UNESCO trained facilitator.

The workshop was supported by the Kingdom of Norway voluntary supplementary contribution to the UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund.

The workshop, which is organized by the Palestinian Ministry of Culture and the UNESCO Ramallah Office, will include participants from various ministries, the Palestinian National Commission for Education, Culture and Science, relevant civil society organizations and research institutions. They will provide their inputs and perspectives to the draft Law in line with the principles and provisions of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage ratified by Palestine in 2011. Once finalized, the draft Law will be submitted to the relevant Palestinian authorities for endorsement.

The workshop is a continuation of a process that started in 2012 when the Ministry of Culture with UNESCO’s technical support and through broad consultation with civil society institutions, prepared an initial draft. The Law will be an important safeguarding measure and together with the participatory process through which it emerged, demonstrate the strong commitment of national authorities to ensure the viability of living heritage in Palestine.

Nigerian officials, policymakers, civil society and members of its United Nations Country Team met in Abuja to discuss the revision of the 1988 Cultural Policy and other national legislation.

The one-day workshop, which featured a cross-section of attendees, including those in fields other than culture such as agriculture, education and health, looked at gaps in current safeguarding policy for Nigeria’s living heritage and associated legal frameworks for amendment.

The initiative is part of the 2014 UNESCO/Japanese Funds-in-Trust cooperation project ‘Support to the effective implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Nigeria’.

A national expert has been assigned to conduct a detailed assessment of the situation and propose recommendations, which is expected to be completed by the end of August 2015.

Document

• Agenda: English
• List of participants: English

The field exercise in Saba was organized by the ICH Committee and started with a meeting to inform all practitioners that attended the consultation in January about the community-based inventory training in Curaçao, as well as the organisation of the field exercise. Additionally, participants identified different forms of ICH to focus on in the field exercise, among which the Maypole dance, the preparation of traditional dishes within families and ICH related to agriculture and the production of food were highlighted. In the end, the Maypole dance was considered to be the most suitable as it was well known, had not been documented thus far and had few practitioners remaining.

Participants (7 females and 3 males) were trained to work with the UNESCO sample framework by members of the ICH Committee. A short documentary was produced about the Maypole dance that focused on the inventorying process. Practitioners were also trained in the various methodologies from the inventory workshop and in the use of the audio-visual equipment. Saba benefited from the participation of a maypole practitioner from St Maarten who conducted workshops with the children of Saba as well as worked with local practitioners. These children also formed part of the team trained to document this element.

The ICH Committee focused its field exercise on Sint Eustatius (Statia) string band music due to its important role in social life and the urgency to safeguard the related knowledge and skills, as practitioners were getting older. Community members involved, as well as active practitioners, formerly active senior practitioners and people who identify with band music but aren’t active practitioners. The key persons from within the string band music community were approached by the ICH Committee to ask for their willingness to participate and their consent to be interviewed and provide information about this element. This was received with enthusiasm. There was great effort to involve youth in the field exercise, with two participants coming from the Simon Doncker Club, the youth organization of the St. Eustatius Historical Foundation. The involvement of this youth organization also provided a basis for future involvement in the inventorying of ICH. To involve more youth outside the cultural field, the ICH Committee organized a specific activity for youth focused on the transfer of knowledge and skills related to playing string band music and the manufacturing of the instruments. The footage of the field exercise will be used to produce a documentary on the Killi Killi band music to further raise awareness.

UNESCO New Delhi office was the guest of the Directorate of Art and Culture, Government of Goa on 27 and 28 April 2015 to orgnaize a two-day training workshop on UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, with a particular focus on inventory making.

Animated by UNESCO resource persons – Dr Shubha Chaudhuri (Director of Archives and Research Centre for Ethnomusicology), Ananya Bhattacharya (Director, Contact Base / banglanatak dot com), and Moe Chiba (Chief, Culture Sector, UNESCO New Delhi), some 27 professionals from Goa took part in the lecture-cum practical sessions to discuss how an inventory of ICH for the State of Goa would look like and what could be the working methodologies.

In India, the protection of heritage is the responsibility of both the Union Government and State Governments. In a vast country such as India with diverse cultural traditions, it could be more effective if each State Government takes the responsibility of drawing up the inventory and implementing the safeguarding plan rather than expecting the Central Government’s initiative. Accordingly, UNESCO New Delhi, in partnership with Sangeet Natak Academi has started since last year the sensitization of State level government officers on the UNESCO Convention. Following the workshop in Delhi in December 2014, the Government of Goa is the very first State to have expressed its willingness to move forward in development of the State-level ICH inventory. The two-day workshop was not intended to provide any clear-cut advice on how an ICH inventory of Goa should be, but rather aimed at steering the attention of the participants on those issues that need to be discussed and planned prior to conducting any survey and data collection for the Inventory. These include the size of the inventory and the type of ICH elements to be covered, data to be collected for each of the ICH elements, method of data organization, modalities of data sourcing, intended follow-up action for the ICH elements under the inventory etc.

Madagascar is one of the French-speaking countries chosen to benefit from the financial support of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Tourism (ADTCA) in the field of safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. The mission in which we took part was prepared by the Nairobi multi-country UNESCO office in close contact with the Ministry of Culture of Madagascar. It took place from April 24 to May 3, 2015. The mission was also an opportunity to visit a local PCI to know the traditional know-how related to the production and the craft of silk in the village of Ambohitrabiby, about fifty kilometers from Antananarivo. Madagascar is a large island with 18 socio-cultural groups and a very strong Comorian community with a population of about 23 million. The country is divided into 22 administrative regions, but the Ministry of Culture is deconcentrated in only 11 regions at present.

The main objective of the mission is working closely with the responsible national cultural institution to identify institutional capacities, perspective, human resource needs of whom are working in the Intangible Culture heritage sector. The outcome of the mission is to develop a realistic project proposal within the local context in the field of ICH safeguarding. Later on the project proposal will be funded by Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (ADTCA).The consultant mission was organized in partnership with the Intangible Cultural Heritage section – UNESCO- HQ, the UNESCO’s Khartoum Office and the Federal Ministry of Culture in Sudan. The mission was conducted by the expert Ms Marina Calvo.

In 2012, at its seventh session, the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) invited UNESCO’s Secretariat ‘to initiate work on a model code of ethics and to report on it to a next session of the Committee’ (Decision 7.COM 6: English|French). In order to initiate this important work, the Secretariat is organizing the present meeting, generously hosted by the Kingdom of Spain and co-funded by Spain and the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund.

The aim of the meeting is to discuss the main lines that should figure into codes of ethics for intangible cultural heritage. This three-day meeting will bring together twelve experts from different UNESCO Member States as well as four members of the Secretariat. The results of the meeting will be presented to the Director-General of UNESCO and subsequently examined by the Committee when it meets for its tenth session in Namibia from 30 November to 4 December 2015.

Debates during the meeting will focus on:

1. The core values of the Convention that should be integrated into codes of ethics for ICH (e.g. values such as primacy of communities, respect for human rights and cultural diversity, limits on access to heritage and possession of heritage);
2. General scope of codes of ethics for ICH. The comparative advantages of being more comprehensive or more focused on specific sectors. The multiple possible addressees (e.g. State agents, civil society, the private sector, the media, tourism operators, tourists, etc.);
3. The specific ethical principles that should be included in codes of ethics for ICH (e.g. sector-specific and/or audience-specific principles, resulting from cross-referencing core values of the Convention against specific sectors or addressees);
4. The possible processes that could be used to elaborate one or more model codes of ethics for ICH and to proceed from a model to specific codes adapted to different contexts at the regional, national and subnational levels (e.g. examples of other model codes and how they were developed, then how they were applied and/or turned into specific codes).

Documents

• Practical information: English|French|Spanish
• Background note and agenda
  ITH/15/EXP/1 Rev.: English|French|Spanish
• Towards codes of ethics for intangible cultural heritage?
  ITH/15/EXP/2: English|French|Spanish
• List of participants
  ITH/15/EXP/3: English/French

The National Directorate of Culture of Sao Tome and Principe in cooperation with UNESCO convenes a workshop on the elaboration of community-based inventories of living heritage in the spirit of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The workshop, which will take place from 30 March to 10 April 2015 in the capital of Sao Tome, will introduce the concepts, objectives and methods of inventorying and includes practical field work in the community of Boa Morte.
As part of the capacity-building project to reinforce the safeguarding of living heritage in the Portuguese speaking countries in Africa (PALOP), the workshop will gather some 25 Santomean particpants including stakeholders from local to national levels. With the aim to strengthen regional cooperation among PALOP countries the training will be co-facilitated by a Brazilian and a Mozambican expert who has been previously trained through the same programme. Moreover, a culture officer from Cabo Verde will attend the workshop in view of similar activities planned in the Archipelago off the coast of Western Africa.
This workshop is made possible thanks to the generous contribution from the Government of Norway to the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund.

Documents

As part of the activity “Strengthening National Capacity for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in Djibouti: Needs Assessment and Project Proposal Development” led by UNESCO and funded by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Tourism and Culture (ADTCA), expertise was provided between March and May 2015 to assess Djibouti’s capacity building needs for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, with the aim of proposing a future project.

In the context of UNESCO’s activity “Strengthening national capacities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in Sudan: assessing needs and developing a project proposal” funded by the Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority (ADTCA), a consultancy service has been delivered from March to May 2015,including a mission to Sudan that was carried out from 3 to 10 April 2015. The mission aimed at identifying, in collaboration with institutions responsible for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Sudan, the needs and keys objectives that can be addressed in the context of UNESCO’s capacity-building strategy for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.
The activity was coordinated by the Intangible Cultural Heritage Section of UNESCO and UNESCO Office in Khartoum (Sudan), in cooperation with the Sudanese National Commission for UNESCO (NATCOM) and the Ministry of Culture of Sudan.

This mission falls within the framework of the National Capacity Building Project for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in eight countries in Africa and the Arab region (Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Madagascar, Palestine, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen): needs assessment and development of project proposals funded by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Tourism and Culture (ADTCA). Within this framework, this 7-day mission took place from February 28 to March 7, 2015 in the Comoros to establish a solid base to support this country in its efforts to safeguard its living heritage, in accordance with the 2003 UNESCO Convention.

Having completed the first joint training on the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage last September, representatives of the Dutch Caribbean (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten) are taking the next significant step in the implementation of a coordinated strategy to safeguard their living heritage.

From 22 to 28 February 2015, community practitioners, as well as governmental and non-governmental experts, will gather in Curacao for a workshop on community-based inventorying of intangible cultural heritage with the primary aim to develop a framework for the inventory of their heritage. The core of the workshop will focus on community participation in the identification and definition of intangible cultural heritage, data collection, organization and management, laying the foundation not only for a 5-day field inventorying exercise to follow in the six respective islands, but for future inventorying and safeguarding work.

Organized by the UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean in close cooperation with national partners across the islands, this workshop is a part of a capacity-building project to reinforce the safeguarding of living heritage in the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname, made possible thanks to the generous contribution from the Government of the Netherlands to the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund.

The workshop had the overall objective of increasing the awareness-raising and improve the understanding of the 2003 Convention for its effective implementation and for the establishment of a sound policy for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage of the communities in North Kivu.

Documents

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