In just six years, an important element of intangible cultural heritage went from being an element in need of urgent safeguarding to being an active part of the lives of Vietnamese people. The Hat Xoan Phu Tho tradition, a distinctive call-and-response musical genre of Phu Tho Province in northern Vietnam, was inscribed on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2011, and as a result it became the focus of an extensive revitalization program to ensure its survival.\n\nA unique blend of song and dance performance, xoan originated in the upland region of Viet Tri in Phu Tho for the people to express the richness of their community lives. Some of the performances are to venerate ancient kings while others are expressions of the people’s skills and artistry or their knowledge of farming, fishing, hunting, weaving, and other rural crafts. xoan is considered the core and essence of the social and cultural identity of the villages of Phu Duc, Kim Dai, Thet, and An Thai.\n\nSince 2011, the state and local communities have been supporting a project to revitalize xoan. A series of creative collaborations between knowledgeable elder practitioners and a nucleus of over sixty younger artists have committed themselves to xoan practice and dissemination and have subsequently secured xoan transmission to future generations. Training classes are held monthly and weekly within the communities. An active set of xoan guilds with as many as a hundred members of three or even four generations of practitioner families are successfully recruiting new adherents.\n\nTo generate an audience for the genre, xoan has been introduced into the regional school curriculum as a reference point for teaching on issues of heritage and local history. Demonstration activities and social events outside the xoan communities, have attracted young people and increased their understanding and enjoyment of xoan.\n\nWithin the xoan communities, many of the temples and shrines used for performances had deteriorated because of war and time, becoming unusable. The state, however, has allocated priority funding to restore these performance areas. Through the government-funded program, community members are fully involved in the restoration and have been empowered to manage their own cultural spaces. On 28 March 2017, the country’s largest site for xoan practice was inaugurated in Kim Duc, a commune of Viet Tri. Legend has it that this space, within the Lai Len temple in Kim Duc, was the first site of xoan performance in Vietnam.\n\nThrough these unique programs, xoan communities have become vibrant places of practice and the transmission of xoan.\n\nPhoto : In marked contrast to the traditional past, Xoan is now widely performed by young practitioners © Le Thi Minh Ly

Inscribed in 2018 on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, Lkhon Khol Wat Svay Andet (Lkhon Kohl) is practiced in a community surrounding Wat Svay Andet, a Buddhist monastery located around ten kilometers east of Phnom Penh on the Mekong River. Lkhon Khol is a traditional mask theater performance of Cambodia with its origins during the Angkor period (ninth to fifteenth centuries). It exclusively is performed by men wearing masks to the accompaniment of a traditional orchestra and melodious recitation.\n\nLkhon Khol, also known as “the monkey dance,” is ceremoniously performed once a year after the Khmer New Year for ritual purposes, linked mostly to the cycle of rice farming and the needs of farming communities. A specific theatrical performance is the Reamker, the Khmer version of Ramayana, which includes an introduction by storytellers who play an important role in the performance.\n\nLkhon Khol is passed across generations orally. However, from 1970 to 1984, due to war and the Khmer Rouge regime, transmission was nearly impossible. In addition, economic factors, insufficient resources, and economic migration from the community have also limited transmission, which is what led it to be inscribed on the Urgent Safeguarding list.\n\nTwo theater groups, Kampong Thom and the National Theater troupes from the Department of Fine Arts and the Ministry of Culture and fine arts, have started performing the Lkhon Khol. In addition, the theatrical performance is also part of the syllabus at the University of Fine Arts.\n\nPhoto 1 : Lkhon Khol performance Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts of Cambodia, 2017\nPhoto 2 : Lkhon Khol Art painting CCBYSA PPPOfficial\nPhoto 3 : Cambodian dance: Reamker (public domain)

I would like to thank Dr. Samuel Lee for inviting me to give this tour of the impacts of the 2003 Convention in the Asia-Pacific Region. I’d also like to thank Dr. Weiming for giving a talk that situated the work we do in a broader context and explained our work with intangible cultural heritage. I found it to be a very stimulating talk and a great way to start this day and a half. I am going to talk on a more basic level about what has been done as a result of countries coming together to ratify an international agreement that aims to safeguard intangible cultural heritage. It was a very ambitious program in the beginning. I was privileged to see a little bit of it working with Ms. Aikawa at the UNESCO headquarters during the time leading up to the Convention.

The ships of Joseon Tongsinsa (diplomatic mission to Japan), a symbol of cultural exchange between Joseon and Japan, became the subject of a study as part of an academic restoration project that examines government-built ships as a means to unveil the original form of Joseon warships, including the panok ship and turtle ship.

The term intangible cultural heritage (ICH) refers to the diverse knowledge, techniques, performance arts, and cultural expressions recreated endlessly by collectives and communities through the interactions with their surroundings, nature, and history. ICH is characterized by communal retention within a collective and comprises a living aspect of culture, which is inherited through the daily lives of people. As a result, the international community, including UNESCO, has begun to newly recognize the value of ICH, and although the international community is showing greater interest towards the protection of ICH, trends such as globalization and urbanization have led to the extinction of many intangible heritage assets. ICH is a field in which the loss of the capacity for continuation and cultural abandonment are risks with high potential. It is for these reasons that there is a grave necessity to imbue the field of ICH with renewed vitality.

This talk will present an overview of the roles of non-governmental organizations in the implementation of the 2003 Convention. It will also point to some challenges without necessarily pointing to solutions. However, we can at least set some stages for discussion over the next couple of days. For those who are very ICH focused, here is some background information to situate the 2003 Convention in the broader, normative work that we do for UNESCO. As the only United Nations (UN) agency with a specific mandate to promote creativity and safeguard the world’s diverse cultural heritage, UNESCO has developed six main culture conventions and a number of declarations and recommendations as standard-setting instruments to work in the field. A 1951 convention on copyright was actually the first UNESCO culture convention, but it left UNESCO to go to the care of WIPO, the World Intellectual Property Organization.

The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) and its Operational Directives outline the important role of NGOs in creating awareness on the Convention, generating space for dialogue and the exchange of good practices and challenges for inputs to programming and policy making at varied levels, and facilitating community participation in taking safeguarding measures through knowledge and tools support and capacity building. The contributions of ICH NGOs have been manifold, including building the capacity of communities, researching and documenting ICH, upholding distinct identities of places and communities through cultural tourism, facilitating transnational flow of creativity, strengthening cultural resources, and developing artist organizations. Now the ICH NGOs need to play a critical role in enabling the inclusion of cultural dimensions in the post-2015 development policy framework. So far culture is not identified as a goal in the proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, culture may be explicitly integrated as a target or as enabler in SDG goals like Poverty Eradication, Building Shared Prosperity & Promoting Equality, Quality Education & Lifelong learning, Gender Equality and Women Empowerment, Strengthening Global Partnership for Development, Ecosystems & Biodiversity, and Creating Peaceful and Inclusive Societies. Through knowledge sharing, networking, and mediating, they can effectively raise awareness among decision makers on the importance of the cultural dimension in development policies. By formulating innovative culture-based development projects with the participation of traditional bearers and practitioners, they can contribute to adoption of locally owned creative economy policies. Key areas of action will include mapping cultural resources; developing indicators on socio economic gains based on heritage, creativity, and cultural resources; and supporting capacity building for managing arts and strengthening the value chain.

UNPLI, the italian network of Pro Loco associations, represents approximately 6,000 Pro Loco associations (a unique type of Italian association devoted to promoting a specific town or location) from various municipalities and old medieval towns, where approximately 600,000 members work as volunteers organizing over 10,000 events, fairs, festivals and much more. Many Italian towns and small cities have a Pro Loco, a civic membership association of volunteers that works with schools, universities and institutions in order to project ways to enhance the town and provide assistance to visitors. In 2010 UNPLI created the online inventory on You Tube “Progetti UNPLI” with hundreds of videos and interviews with craftsmen, musicians, local experts and many other people on their connections with the cultural heritage of their\nregions: http://www.youtube.com/user/ProgettiUNPLI. UNPLI in collaboration with SIMBDEA, another italian accredited NGO, is working in order to build an Italian network for ICH. These Ngos are collaborating in the building of a participatory inventory strategy in Cocullo, a little town in Abruzzo, where every 1th of May takes place the “Feast of San Domenico Abate and the rite of snakes”.Since 2013 UNPLI runs the website of the ICH NGO FORUM (www.ichngoforum.org) and the Facebook’s page “Intangible cultural heritage and civil society”.

The profound difficulties international ICH community faces during the Corona pandemic is truly worrisome. For the NGOs of Korea, the common factor in dealing with the pandemic was for the ICH communities to absorb online activities and become fluent in online platforms for ICH safeguarding. But Bridging the digital gap is still remaining. So Hanhee Hahm, presented experience of COVID-19 and engagement of her with the ICH Community and counter measures against the pandemic society.

From 10 to 14 March 2015, Tropical Cyclone Pam (TC Pam) struck Vanuatu, an island country in the Pacific composed of more than 80 islands with a population of around 270,000 people and with some 100 languages. The category 5 cyclone caused widespread damage across the country. TC Pam’s eye passed close to Efate Island in Sefa Province, where the capital Port Vila is located, with winds around 250km/hr and gusts peaking at 320km/hr. The President of Vanuatu, Father Baldwin Lonsdale, who was attending the third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, returned to the country immediately, before the adoption of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015-2030) was concluded. The Sendai Framework includes the importance of Disaster Risk Reduction strategy of cultural heritage to contribute to strengthening communities’ resilience and nurture a culture of prevention.

The Silk Roads is a path and a route, not a fixed concept but a dynamic and expanding polysemic concept. The definition of the Silk Roads varies depending on academic perspectives. Toward the end of the twentieth century, the Silk Roads have become symbols of peace and understanding. It is at risk of abuse, commercialization, and political misapplication. Countries along the Silk Roads are experiencing a great deal of change, especially under the influence of globalization and commercialization. They are, therefore, highly vulnerable to change. It is necessary to consider the definition and target countries/areas, membership, access online and offline, gaps in ICT content production, and updating and maintaining information. Recommendations on improving a possible network include strengthening the information sharing capacity, improving the quality of information, and promoting and making successful public and private partnership programs. Two questions we have to ask are “What is the position of intellectual/academic cooperation for ICH safeguarding along the Silk Roads?” and “Can we support another new scientific approach?”