The Samoan government’s efforts to revitalize fine mat weaving (‘ie sae) and the making of siapo or tapa, a bark cloth art, now includes a series of short films describing the processes. The film series was commissioned by the Ministry of Women, Community, and Social Development and produced by Galumalemana Steven Percival, a local filmmaker and ICHCAP correspondent. The documentary films in the Samoan language provide viewers with a glimpse into how these cultural products continue to be used in Samoan society. These traditional crafts are full of esoteric knowledge and lie at the bedrock of Samoa’s rich intangible cultural heritage.\n\nHere is a short video from the series.\n\nYoutube: https://youtu.be/Ccuf67O3Gos \n\nPhoto : Makers of Samoan siapo or tapa use traditional knowledge for dyes and fixatives ©Galumalemana Steven Percival

The food we eat is an important part of culture. It is also an expression of community identity. As American folklorist Millie Rahn writes, The kitchen, historically, is the place where families gather and where the everyday and the ceremonial meet and overlap. Here families interact and share private traditions, expressing identity through their food to each other and to the world. Creativity is alive in this space, from daily mealtimes to more elaborate feasts that mark rites of passage, religious and secular holidays, and other special events. This is where knowledge is passed on, from traditional ways of preparing and using various ingredients, implements, tools, and techniques to legends, stories, anecdotes, and cultural exchanges that have become part of familial and regional folklife. We all eat, and associate different layers of cultural meaning to the food we consume. Explorations of food, then, can be an easy conduit into the complex world of intangible cultural heritage. This article gives several examples from the safeguarding initiatives of the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador that have used foodways as a means to get people thinking about, and engaged with, concepts of cultural transmission and heritage conservation.

This paper presents UNESCO’s approaches and activities under two functions: 1) the standard‐setting function, which is mostly carried out at headquarters level through intergovernmental committees and in close collaboration with Member States; and 2) the “laboratory of ideas” function, which is implemented at the national level by UNESCO field offices. Capacity building, at both the institutional and individual levels, is a major focus that is integrated throughout all our work.

Food plays an important role in spiritual rituals and worship for many faiths including Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. The food offered to God is called prasada/prasadam, which means a gracious gift. Prasadam could be any o!ering, but typically an edible food is firrst o!ered to a deity in his or her name.

Globalisation has its benefits. But it could also diminish our heritage in ways that we may not sometimes even be conscious of. Effective minimization of the negative impacts is possible with timely interventions. Sometimes it may be too late before significant elements of our culture are endangered or even disappear. It is this concern that led the world community to come together and adopt the international Convention by UNESCO in 2003 for Safeguarding Intangible Heritage. It is passé to say that globalisation has accelerated to a pace that we are challenged to keep up with it on many fronts. We are quite familiar with the social, economic and environmental issues. In addressing only these three pillars during the 2000-2015 MDG phase of the UN, we now have a lot of catching up to do. Culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development, even if not detailed enough, is located in the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will guide us between 2015 and 2030. We must endeavour to bring together the implementation of the 2003 Convention and higher education as part of the four-pillar paradigm. Several questions need to be addressed. \n \nCan higher educational institutions such as universities, specialised colleges add value to the UNESCO’s efforts in safeguarding intangible heritage in sustainable development? Can we find synergies between the strategic directions of higher educational institutions and the Overall Results Framework for the UNESCO 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention? In what ways can Regional, Sub- Regional, National and Local networking and knowledge sharing be empowering to safeguard intangible heritage and the rich cultural diversity of the Asia Pacific? Given that language itself is not covered by the Convention but included as a vehicle of the intangible heritage (Article 2.2.a), how best can we maximise on the linguistic diversity of the region promoted through higher educational institutions in minimising the hegemonic impacts of monolingualism that endangers so much of our intangible heritage? \n\nFirst and foremost, it must be underlined that UNESCO and a number of national and international agencies including NGOs have advocated strongly for the inclusion of culture as a separate SDG in the UN 2030 Agenda. None of the 17 SDGs focus exclusively on culture. However, the advocacy has created an inclusive discourse on culture that cuts across the SDGs. The resulting Agenda includes several explicit references to cultural aspects. The following SDG Targets are significant. They provide windows of opportunity to ensuring that we locate culture in the SDGs and in doing so promote the safeguarding of intangible heritage:

Building a canoe for the palolo rise, an event that occurs twice in a year, is rarely described and documented in moving and still images. With accompanying text capturing knowledge shared by a Master Craftsman, Lesā Motusaga of Sa‘anapu village in Samoa, this paper provides insights into the Intangible Cultural Heritage associated with the building of a paopao, dugout canoe, for a rich fishing tradition. \nPalolo, a delicacy that rises pre-dawn from coral beds seven days after the full moon in October and November, is known as the caviar of the Pacific, an apt description given the high price people are willing to \npay for this rare seafood. Briefly, it is a seafood with significant socio-cultural value now enjoying high, if not inflated, economic value. \n\nThe natural environment is not a typical classroom but is, insofar as Intangible Cultural Heritage is concerned, an important setting where knowledge is transmitted, particularly knowledge of the environment and tapu or sa, the sacred laws or forbidden acts designed for its protection and conservation.

Since 2014, NGOs has been playing an important, if not decisive, role in ICH safeguarding, and the UNESCO Convention 2003 was implemented in Ukraine. The development center “Democracy through Culture,” the independent think-and-do tank engaged in cultural policy issues, including cultural heritage, took a core part in preparing the periodic report of Ukraine on the implementation of the Convention 2003 (approved at the eleventh session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in Addis Ababa, in 2016) and coordination of all stakeholders.

"This paper considers some of the challenges around inventory making for intangible cultural heritage from a European perspective. It will outline the work that is currently being undertaken in Scotland to develop an online inventory using a wiki-based approach. Scotland as a devolved nation within the UK has its own cultural policies that embrace the concept of intangible cultural heritage (ICH); however, at a UK level, there appears to be resistance to the ratification of the 2003 UNESCO Convention on ICH. Scotland has taken an inclusive and participatory approach to the creation of an inventory that reflects the broad and open definition of ICH that has been adopted. This approach has brought some challenges as we begin to operationalize the identification and future safeguarding of ICH in Scotland. In managing the process, we are beginning to encounter some ethical questions. The digital inventory format of the wiki promotes grassroots community ownership, which means that data is user generated. Our challenges are around how this data should be moderated whilst adhering to the principles of a community approach, but also ensuring that we do not actively promote ICH that contravenes the basic human rights that the Convention is designed to uphold."

The question of how to apply integrated approach in ICH safeguarding is a fundamental issue in implementing the 2003 Convention. It also entails further questions not only for intangible heritage field, but also other relevant cultural heritage fields.\n\nThis session aims to find out the best method of integrated approaches from the viewpoint of ICH safeguarding within the framework of the 2003 Convention. Such aim will require a discussion of the intangible value of tangible heritage and an inquiry of the tangible elements of ICH by looking into various case studies of 'cultural spaces’.\n

Since the organizers of this international academic conference sent the four essays to be featured in Session 1 in advance, I will present my opinions and questions regarding the said four essays and end by opening shared agendas for discussion based on the aim of this international academic conference, which was organized as a way to contribute to the transmission and growth of traditional maritime culture in the Asia-Pacific region.

While recording and performance copyrights on some of the recordings has expired, the underlying works recorded in most cases fall into the categories of intangible cultural heritage featuring traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) not normally covered by legal copyright frameworks. With the growing interest among indigenous and traditional communities around the world in cultural reclamation and increased awareness among these communities of their cultural documents held in museums, libraries, and archives sometimes thousands of miles away, new frameworks for dealing with the unique intellectual property challenges these documents raise are required. This paper will describe the learning curve and outcomes of attempts at the BL to establish such workable frameworks and methods for legal and ethical inclusion of a large body of material for worldwide distribution on the BL Sounds website. The paper offers anecdotal reports and ideas for the development of best practice for dealing with intellectual property in this context.

Laos has a rich diversity of cultures, lifestyles, and arts, many of which intersect. The country’s seventeen provinces stretch 1,162 kilometers from north to south, with 6.8 million inhabitants representing fifty officially recognized ethnic groups in four main language families. The majority Tai Lao people, from whom the country gets its name, make up about 53% of the population, with numerous ethnic minority groups comprising the rest.\nLaos is well known for its UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and the Traditional Arts and Ethnology Centre (TAEC) is a cultural heritage social enterprise in the UNESCO World Heritage town of Luang Prabang. It is the only independent museum and resource center in Laos dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the traditional arts and lifestyles of the country’s diverse ethnic groups.