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

Co-organized by ICHCAP and the UNESCO Bangkok Office, participants and speakers hope to have a deeper engagement with ideas of building cooperation and networking initiatives among higher education institutions for ICH safeguarding from founded regional networks in Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. This session is a continuation of our efforts to have a better understanding of the integration between intangible cultural heritage and higher education, which visibly faces more challenges at the present time as the COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated measures directly affecting the operations of educational institutions all over the world such as school closure, instruction through online means, and disruption of research field work and other related activities.

The third session of the ICH Webinar Series primarily aims to examine the state of networking activities in different regions around the world, how networks were formed, how they operate and contribute to research and teaching about ICH, its safeguarding and transmission. These important concerns will be addressed by experts and representatives of now-established collaborative efforts based in four continents of the world, anticipated to edify notions of cultural diversity, different methods of solidifying connections for heritage protection, and academic unity in ensuring that living heritage is significantly a part of 21st century knowledge production.

Speakers include Dr. Christina Ortega Nuere (Former President of the European Network on Cultural Management and Policy), Dr. Jacob Mapara (Professor, Chinhoyi University of Technology), Prof. Mónica Guariglio (Coordinator, Network of Academic Cooperation in ICH of Latin America and the Caribbean) and Dr. Montira Horayangura Unakul (Cultural Officer, UNESCO Bangkok Office). Dr. Tim Curtis of UNESCO Headquarters and Director-General Adriana Molano Arenas of the Regional Centre for the Safeguarding of ICH of Latin America will formally open the session.

Session III will ascertain the implications of relevant higher education networks on the teaching of heritage, as well as the development of heritage in discourse and public consciousness.

The ICH Webinar Series in its entirety is free and open to the public. Interested parties should register through this link.
Please visit this webpage for a consolidated information about the series.

The inaugural session of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Webinar Series was held on 18 June 2020, centering on the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on living heritage in the Asia-Pacific region. Co-organized by ICHCAP and the UNESCO Bangkok Office, the first session featured presentations that addressed how the pandemic unsettled the transmission of ICH, particularly the involvement of communities, groups, and individuals in ICH safeguarding activities. Significantly, the first session looked into the possible roles ICH might take in a crisis—a crucial understanding of living heritage especially in imagining the future that is indubitably defined by the challenging measures the pandemic has brought upon us. Delving deeper into the impacts of the pandemic on heritage with the state of higher education in mind, the second session of the webinar series is intentioned to look into the teaching of heritage-related disciplines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The incalculable damages the pandemic has had on cultural tourism and heritage conservation practices—with the Luang Prabang World Heritage in Laos, Borobodur in Indonesia, and other important sites of tangible heritage in Asia on lockdown for months—have crisp implications on the link between heritage education and economic development, the study of professional heritage conservation and risk assessment, as well as site management and policies that also consider the livelihood of communities related to specific tangible heritage sites. The harsh effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are strikingly visible in universities, too. In the Republic of Korea and China, academic gatherings have been cancelled, with the drastic change being instruction largely served through online platforms. In this survey of universities with academic programs related to living heritage, these two East Asian countries have university degrees that solely focus on ICH. Meanwhile, with varied border closure, lockdown, or curfew strategies to restrict mobility and travel in countries where there are academic degrees or post-graduate programs that are highly related to ICH such as India, Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, Myanmar, and the Philippines, we can only expect to find ourselves among academics, researchers, and higher education students looking for innovative teaching and learning models, instructional designs, and alternative practices of scholarly study that respond to the needs of heritage instruction amidst the pandemic.

How does COVID-19 pandemic affect the way we think about the relation between heritage and educational institution? What are the new issues and understanding for teaching or research to address that have been raised by the pandemic (e.g. role of heritage, creativity, community, sustainability, etc.)? What alternative practices are formulated to cover the objectives of traditional methods of critical inquiry such as fieldwork, survey, and interview? These are some of the important questions the Session II of the ICH Webinar Series will address. Co-organised by ICHCAP, UNESCO Bangkok Office, and the Asian Academy of Heritage Management, the session will be held on 2 July 2020 at 17:00 (Korean Standard Time). It will be chaired by Boram Kim of ICHCAP and moderated by Dr. Hanhee Hahm of Chonbuk National University (Republic of Korea), featuring presentations by Dr. Neel Kamal Chapagain of Ahmedabad University (India), Kristal Buckley of Deakin University (Australia), Danilo Pesce of Polytechnic of Turin (Italy), and Dr. Nikhil Joshi of the National University of Singapore.

The ICH Webinar Series is free and open to the public. Interested parties should register through this link. Please visit this webpage for a consolidated information about the series.

The 14th annual meeting of the South-East European Expert Network on Intangible Cultural Heritage will take place on 26 June 2020, in a virtual modality due to the travel restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 emergency.

The 2020 workshop is intended to provide participants with an opportunity to 1) share knowledge and experiences on the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage, as well as on related responses from relevant actors in the region; and 2) stimulate critical thinking and inspire action with regard to ICH safeguarding in Covid-19 times, beyond the current emergency period.

The meeting is organized by UNESCO through the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe, in cooperation with the UNESCO Culture Sector – Living Heritage Entity, with the support of the Regional Centre for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in South-East Europe (Category 2 Centre operating under the auspices of UNESCO, based in Sofia, Bulgaria).

The Workshop on Cooperation and International Assistance in the field of Intangible Cultural Heritage (22-23 June 2020) is one of the activities planned under the project “Strengthening capacities for the effective implementation of the 2003 Convention of the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Lebanon”, funded by the Government of Japan.

The COVID-19 pandemic has seriously caused public disruption manifesting in different forms such as places on lockdowns, untimely shutdown of schools, cancellations of mass gatherings, and temporary closure of businesses. As the field of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) contends with the effects of the pandemic, ICHCAP and UNESCO Bangkok Office are organising sessions of interlinked online seminars dubbed as ICH Webinar Series to tackle important issues around ICH safeguarding in the time of COVID-19 and the future ahead of it. While the first couple sessions of the series will hear reports and studies about the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on ICH safeguarding, the series itself is conceived to be a platform of ideas relevant to key areas in ICH Safeguarding such as information-sharing, networking, and cooperation among stakeholders in the ICH field.

The first session of the ICH Webinar Series will assess how COVID-19 pandemic has affected the cultural lives of peoples in the Asia-Pacific region and identify possible roles ICH might take in crisis. In light of the many vulnerabilities the pandemic has exposed in ICH communities, the session will hold a discussion of innovative solutions for ICH safeguarding and transmission. Slated on 18 June 2020 at 17:00 (Korea time), the first session will feature presentations from Juliette Hopkins (Living Heritage Entity, UNESCO), Anna Yau (The University of Hong Kong), Kirk Siang Yeo (National Heritage Board, Singapore) Professor Christopher Ballard (The Australian National University), and Professor Eric Zerrudo (University of Santo Tomas).

The ICH Webinar Series aims to foster public participation in discussions about living heritage. Questions are welcome from the public. The concept note of the first session is accessible through this link

Those interested to join the conversation are advised to write their questions in this pre-registration form

Within the framework of the project “Strengthening national capacities for safeguarding Palestinian intangible cultural heritage”, the UNESCO Ramallah Office holds the workshop on preparing nominations and requests for international assistance, thanks to the generous support from the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism.

Implemented from January 2019 to July 2020, the UNESCO-EU project Engaging Youth for an Inclusive and Sustainable Europe proposes an innovative approach to education by inviting teachers and learners to explore their living heritage and learn not only about it, but also with and through it. Over the past few months, teachers and students from 10 selected UNESCO Associated Schools across the European Union have developed and implemented pilot projects in their own schools. Accompanied by UNESCO trained facilitators, each school team has conducted activities to identify the living heritage present in their school communities and to integrate it in lesson plans of subjects as diverse as mathematics, physics or languages, as well as in extra-curricular activities.

In this context, UNESCO, in close cooperation with the Netherlands Commission for UNESCO has brought together the ten ASPnet school teams to share their experiences, analyze the approaches used, and provide input for the development of the resource materials for teachers in Europe, to be produced by the end of the project.

The workshop was held from 27 February to 1 March 2020, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Organized by Khartoum UNESCO Office in collaboration with the National Council for Cultural Heritage and Promotion of National Languages. The workshops are part of the project of “Strengthening National Capacities for Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in Sudan”, sponsored by Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Department (UAE).