Haryana is a state in the Northern part of India. The region is famous for its historic connection with the ancient Indus valley civilization, stories of Mahabharata, and the three famous battles of Panipat. The state also boasts of a rich cultural heritage and is home to the Suraj Kund Mela held in Faridabad every year, one of the largest cultural gatherings in the world.\n\nThis article focuses on the craft of basket-making undertaken by the members of Self Help Groups, functioning in Tanda village of Rai block, Sonipat district, Haryana.\n\nIndia has a long tradition of basket weaving and it is a very popular craft in rural India. Basket weaving is the process of sewing or weaving materials into a shape with a cylindrical, circular or square base. The craft of basket weaving was introduced to Haryana by women of the Multani-speaking Audh community who had migrated from Pakistan during Partition and taken up this craft as a means of supplementing their meagre earnings. Traditionally, the raw materials were the locally grown date palm; phoos, a wild grass; and pula, thin leaves of the sarkanda plant—these were made into coiled baskets intended for domestic use by the womenfolk of the household. The products include a range of round-bottomed, cylindrical, and shallow baskets with and without lids. Some of the cylindrical baskets are nearly three feet high and have lids. The leaves are also plaited into strips and formed into bags and mats. The dry palm leaves, some of which are dyed so as to achieve a coloured pattern, are wound around a bunch of phoos or pula and sewn in place by threading the leaf through the lower coil; a big blunt needle is utilized to push the leaf through. (Ranjan, Handmade in India)\n\nPyari (name of the artisan), a resident of Tanda Village originally belonging to Punjab, moved to Haryana with her family in the late 1980s. She has inherited the skills to make beautiful baskets from her mother. Pyari, called Ammi (meaning mother in Hindi) by everyone, shared her techniques to make them and how she innovates with the designs during the process.\n\nThe basic raw materials used for the craft include Sarkanda or moonj grass– a type of grass grown abundantly in Haryana during winters, Khajur leaves(date palm leaves) that are soaked in water overnight to make them soft. To make new designs, colored Khajur leaves are also used as it adds unique patterns to the baskets.\n\nPyari is proud of her traditional skills and believes that they should be continued by the next generation. She is also concerned about the sustenance of the craft as most of the young people aren’t interested in such skills and may never understand the importance of the same.\n\nIndian crafts sector is the second-largest employer in the country after agriculture and the Sonipat administration is taking many active steps to keep the cultural heritage alive. It further aims to promote handmade crafts and make them accessible at the local, district, and national levels.\n\nHaryana has a rich cultural history that reflects inter alia in its crafts, textiles, and food. What’s interesting to witness about all the above crafts is the knowledge preserved by women who are involved in continuing these crafts.\n\nphoto 1 : Pyari bai (Artisan), Tanda Village, Sonipat, Haryana © Jyoti Shukla\nphoto 2 : Map of Sonipat district in Haryana, India\nphoto 3 : Basket Makers of Punjab(Courtesy of Special Collections_University of Houston Libraries)\nphoto 4 : Pyari bai (Artisan), Tanda Village, Sonipat, Haryana © Jyoti Shukla\nphoto 5 : (Left)Sarkanda leaves / (Right) Khajur (Date palm) leaves © Jyoti Shukla\nphoto 6 : Colorful Khajur leaves © Jyoti Shukla \nphoto 7 : Sarkanda baskets in the making © Jyoti Shukla \nphoto 8 : Final products: Sarkanda baskets © Jyoti Shukla

"BeezBistar Foundation (BBF), a community action-based non-governmental organization, was formed in 2009 by development workers and researchers. “BeezBistar” means prosperity in life and peaceful and joyful relations between human beings and all other life-forms. BBF works with local communities, especially farmers, weavers, fishers, adivashi, dalit, and other marginalized and socially vulnerable people for a prosperous and healthy life. Its guiding ethical principles are non-discrimination on the grounds of caste, race, class, and gender. BBF believes in people’s capacity to transform their existing situation of poverty and become pros- perous through a mediated process of interdependent, collective, and community support and actions. The notion of BEEZ is grounded in the local and indigenous culture of the peoples of Bangladesh, as well as advanced by science and life-affirming knowledge and technologies."

An inventory generally refers to a comprehensive list of tangible items, such as property, goods on hand, contents in an area. So within this idea, one must wonder whether it is possible in the field of culture to inventory each item.

The Phnom Penh Vientiane Workshop and Charter were driven by participants who represented museum and heritage leadership from linguistically and culturally diverse communities of South-East Asia and Timor-Leste. Its integrity, from preparation to follow-up, has been overseen by a leadership of entirely Asian linguistic and cultural backgrounds. It was the first of such major initiatives in Asia by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). It addressed the concern that models and methods from developed or rich countries, where heritage contexts are well resourced, may not necessarily work for cultural communities and groups in low economic indicator countries. This concern was prioritised with the significance given to stakeholder or carrier and transmitter communities in the UNESCO 2003 Convention.

Dr Diego Gradis expressed his regret at Dr Karma Phuntsho’s inability to attend the conference. Mr Guri asked Ms Joanne Orr to expand on the conditions and the environment for NGO network building. He asked Mr Gauthier whether NGOs in Quebec had other focuses besides research. Regarding African countries, he explained that since societies survived for generations before development, it is possible to build on indigenous knowledge—not for the sake of culture, but for the sake of development.

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region abound in a wealth of cultural expressions, but these expressions are not often recognized as skills that may be used to revitalize communities. ICH safeguarding needs to look beyond research and documentation, building databases on art forms, and creating awareness through one-off festivals or made-up landscapes where the artists and crafts persons are uprooted from their natural environment to engage in demonstration. The paper shares examples from an initiative in India that emphasizes the need for investing in communities to revitalize their traditional skills and promote community-based creative enterprises, including cultural tourism to safeguard ICH. The Art for Life (AFL) initiative of banglanatak dot com, a social enterprise headquartered at Kolkata, India, aims at fostering an alternative pathway for development using cultural heritage as concrete means for improving people’s livelihoods and empowering local communities. Around twelve languishing folk art forms have been revitalized. The initiative has led to improved income and quality of life for 5,000 traditional artists. Non-monetized outcomes include improved education of children, improved health, and better access to sanitation. Capacity\nbuilding of the ICH practitioners, documentation, and dissemination, heritage education and awareness building, and promotion of grassroots creative enterprise have been the critical components of the safeguarding process.

Based on the accumulated experience over the course of fifteen years since the adoption of the 2003 Convention, Southeast Asia is well known for its diverse and abundant intangible heritage. Many states in this region have already initiated ICH safeguarding plans with active participation of communities.\nHowever, a number of Member States are still having difficulties employing community‐based safeguarding plan and programs. In implementing the 2003 Convention, much attention should be paid to build capacity to support and safeguard a wider range of ICH Stakeholders, including communities, group, and individuals.\nTherefore, this session will provide an opportunity to share experiences and discuss on the roles the community should exercise in safeguarding ICH. In this session, we will discuss the following questions: (1) Do ICH communities, groups, individuals, and practitioners fully recognise the spirit and significance of the 2003 Convention? (2) Are they subsequently assigned to embody appropriate roles?

Coming from a formerly colonized and currently developing country like the Philippines, advancing cultural heritage education becomes imperative. Cultural heritage education potentially stems the negative impact of globalization on culture. It can also dismantle the framework of neocolonialism in formerly colonized states whose educational systems were established by colonizers. While these promises of what cultural heritage education can do are easily identified, crafting a higher education degree program in cultural heritage, especially intangible cultural heritage, has many ramifications. This paper problematizes the challenges in the development and institution of a higher education degree program in intangible cultural heritage. Specifically this paper will attempt to raise and discuss issues that (may) surface in the development and institution a higher education degree program in intangible cultural heritage in the light of current higher education systems, practices and processes using primarily the context of the Philippines as a developing country. National higher education policies, program structure and content, pedagogy as well resources for teaching, and career prospects and employability are the areas which shall be problematized in this discussion. While the discussion is primarily on the context of the Philippines, the discussion can possibly have reverberations in developing countries.

In this new century, barriers are falling, customs are changing, and yet there is a core of meaning, of affect, of memory that people refuse to give up. In this flowing and foaming world, people rush towards the new, at the same time that they want to cling to meanings and shared experiences with other. Why? Because this sharing gives them a sense of self and of identity in an open world. The loss of such references are keenly felt, psychologically and politically, as is very evident in the world today

Traditional knowledge refers to the body of knowledge, indigenous practices and believes build up by of ethnic and local communities through generations of living in close contact with nature and transmitted through oral tradition and first hand observation from one generation to the other. Traditional knowledge is the essence of the identities and world views of indigenous and other people and constitutes the collective heritage and patrimony of the communities. With the advancement of science and technology and spread of modern education, a unique situation evolves. On one hand, the tradition bearers are trying to cope up with the modern advancement and development even at the cost of their traditional knowledge. On the other hand, the policy makers and educationist are now started to realise the importance of the traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions to maintain and preserve the colourful and diversity of cultures throughout the world. Moreover, this diversified knowledge are also in focus because of rising importance of “sustainable” and “green” development. \n\nAssam in the North East India with its variety of ethnic communities as well as other local populations presents a huge corpus of traditional knowledge. Assam being rich in natural resources also presents a unique situation of its varied manifestations by the ethnic communities through beliefs and religious practices, ceremonies, cultural values, food habits, traditional medicines and healing practices, arts and crafts forms, traditional technologies and house patterns. However, with changing socio- economic and environmental conditions the traditional knowledge system of the indigenous population is being under threat. \n\nTezpur University, specifically, the Department of Cultural Studies (known as the Department of Traditional Culture and Art Forms during its inception in the year 1996) have been involved in the study, documentation and research of Intangible and tangible cultural heritage of the region. The department have been engaged in field visit and research projects on various issues of ICH. However, through the project in question, an attempt was made to document the community traditional knowledge of Tezpur area of Assam, India with active participation of the women of the families as active partners and data collectors. It was executed by Tezpur University on a pilot basis in collaboration with Tezpur Mahila Samiti - a women organization working for wellbeing and economic development of women. Before starting of this project, periodic awareness programmes were undertaken by the museum, Department of Cultural Studies, Tezpur University among the common people regarding importance of heritage and need of its preservation.

UNESCO has ten subcategories of human communities and networks, but there are two patterns of human civilizations—sedentary and nomadic communities. Difficulty with archaeologists and historians to explore and discover civilizational heritage information. Nomadic communities served as an ancient networking system, bridging sedentary communities with cultural and technological information. There is a necessity of a network approach on the discovery, excavation, preservation, and public opening of Silk Roads intangible cultural heritages through a singular project hub—namely through ICHCAP. Examples of existing projects include the Caravanserai projects by UNESCO and National Geographic, which focus on tangible heritage along the Silk Roads without considering cultural interconnections and influences. A Korean case is the KBS six-episode documentary series on the origin, spreading and localization of noodle cuisine in Eurasian communities. Another networking case currently under way is the development of series on Silk Roads martial arts, dance, and play through Korea, Japan, China, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Iran.

Telugu language is the mother tongue for carriers and transmitters in safeguarding the Intangible Heritage of the Telugu people. We have come up with an interdisciplinary and innovative educational programming that safeguards our intangible heritage of over 53.6 million people in Andhra Pradesh (AP). Our higher educational programming cuts across the five domains delineated in the 2003 ICH Convention of UNESCO. It is an integral part of a systematic safeguarding plan that is unique. I will introduce the framework that enables us to bring together the teaching of intangible heritage in a linguistic environment through six tertiary educational institutions for the Telugu speaking people. I am responsible for the curricula, pedagogy, employment of carriers and transmitters as teachers and performance education in all the six colleges. \n\nWe also address the interface between intangible heritage and language through higher education. Moreover, I will also reflect on my own engagement as a carrier and transmitter of theatre traditions of the Telugu people. My conclusion would advocate that we need to think in new and innovative ways for safeguarding the rich diversity of the intangible heritage of humanity. Our innovative tertiary education programming provides a feasible role model.