Singapore’s Malay Heritage Centre (MHC) organizes Lintas Nusantara, an annual dance festival that serves as a platform for dance masters and troupes from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and other countries in the region to showcase their work and capabilities and to facilitate cultural exchanges among the countries involved.\n\nTo commemorate the tenth anniversary of the festival, MHC will be launching a publication entitled Lintas Nusantara: A Spectacle of Dance and Music in October 2021. The publication will provide a visual record of all the dances performed at the festival and include several essays that aim to provide a deeper understanding of the various dance forms as well as their origins, development, and evolution.\n\nIt will cover a total of twenty-three Malay dance forms performed in Singapore, different states in Malaysia, and different regions of Indonesia. These dance forms include Zapin Sungai Kallang from Singapore; Mak Yong and Tari Asyik from Malaysia; and Pajaga Makkunrai (Bugis), Tari Golek Menak (Yogyakarta) and Tari Gending Sriwijaya (Palembang) from Indonesia.\n\nAs part of the publication’s aim to foster more extensive research into dances from the Malay Archipelago, it will feature twenty-seven essays by academics and researchers from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, East Timor, and the Philippines. These essays will cover topics such as preserving dance and community traditions; spirituality in dance and movement; forging cultural and community identity through dance; cultural borrowings as expressed through music, costumes, and movements.\n\nLintas Nusantara: A Spectacle of Dance and Music will also include reflections regarding the importance of cultural exchanges in the growth and evolution of dance and music as well as the development of a dynamic Malay dance ecosystem from musicians Thow Xin Wei (Gamelan Singa Nglaras) and Fadhli Ramlee (aluNada Muzik) as well as an interview with Mr. Osman Abdul Hamid, a dance practitioner renowned for his artistic contributions to the Malay dance scene in Singapore since the late 1970s.\n\nThrough this publication, MHC hopes to provide an overview of the wide spectrum of Malay dance forms, contribute to existing research and documentation on Malay performing arts, and promote greater cross-cultural understanding and appreciation of the diverse dance forms from the Malay world.\n\nLintas Nusantara: A Spectacle of Dance and Music is a bilingual publication written in both English and Malay, and interested parties can send their inquiries to Jamal_Mohamad@nhb.gov.sg.\n\nPhoto 1 : Dancers from Guntur Mataram Dance Company (Jakarta) performing the Tari Golek Asmaradana Bawaraga. Photograph courtesy of Malay Heritage Centre\nPhoto 2 : Artist Seni Budaya (Singapore) performing the Tari Gending Sriwijaya with dancers from Universitas PGRI Palembang (Indonesia). Photograph courtesy of Malay Heritage Centre

The Vietnamese Institute for Musicology and the Binh Dinh Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism have jointly organized Bai choi Folk Art of Vietnam and Similar Art Forms around the World, an international conference held on 13 and 14 January 2015 in Qui Nhon City, Binh Dinh Province, Vietnam.

Malaysia is a developing nation of Southeast Asia. A few of their famous slogans reflect the diversity of its present ethnic groups in terms of language, customs and traditions inherited from past generations, ‘One Malaysia‘ and ‘Malaysia Truly Asia‘. Malaysia’s cultural fusion is the result of immigration, trade and cultural exchanges over many centuries with Arab nations, China, and India, where the arrival of the first foreigners brought along with them their wealth as well as their cultural heritage and religion. Presently, these ethnic groups still maintain their cultural traditions, but managed to come together to develop Malaysia’s unique and contemporary diverse heritage.

In Turkmenistan, the national inventory of intangible cultural property comprises five domains: oral expression, beliefs, performing arts, craftsmanship, and traditional knowledge. Epics belong in the division of oral expression. More than ten elements have been identified in this field, including epics such as Gorogly, Shasenem and Garip, Zokhre and Takhir, Khuyrlukga and Khemra, Sayatly Khemra, Asly Kerem, Arzy-Gambar, Khatamnama, Warka-Gulsha, Kasym oglan Melike-Dilaram, Nejep oglan, and Tulum Hoja. The epic Gorogly holds an especially important position among Turkmen epics.

Folkland, International Centre for Folklore and Culture is a nonprofit NGO devoted to promoting folklore and culture. Headquartered in Kerala in south-western India, Folkland has three main centers and several chapters in India and associations with other organizations abroad through MOUs and collab-orative partnerships. Folkland has been affiliated with the UNESCO ICH sector since 2010. Folkland envisions a society that respects cultural heritage by conserving arts and cultural traditions and transmitting them to future generations. As such, Folkland is proudly dedicated to promoting Indian culture and values with a focus on intangible cultural heritage. The center provides access to knowledge and information about intangible cultural heritage and is known for promoting indigenous culture that inspires audiences to explore the cultural and artistic heritage of Kerala. The main domains covered by Folkland are performing arts; oral traditions and expressions; social practices, rituals, and festivals; and traditional crafts. Folkland documents oral traditions and practices and extends training to younger genera-tions to revitalize old and near-extinct traditional art forms. One ICH element of particular interest to Folkland is tolpavakoothu (shadow puppetry).

This paper and the presentation highlight the value of the Yapese fish weirs and how they, and the associated intangible cultural heritage can be used to assist modern-day approaches to marine ecological \nconservation, in addition to keeping traditional sustainable fishing practices alive.\n\nYap is located 840 km south west of Guam and 1,850 km east-south\u0002east of Manila. It consists of four volcanic islands (referred to as Yap Proper), seven small coralline islands and about 130 atolls forming the \n‘Outer Islands’ that cover about 800 km in the north west Pacific Ocean, all of which forms Yap state—one of the four States of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). \n\nOn the reef flat adjacent to the volcanic islands, the Yapese developed a harmonious, sustainable system of fishing that incorporated spiritual, social, cultural and environmental connectivity and awareness. This is of particular importance to the inshore fishery, which is a sensitive region for fish breeding, and needs to be well conserved, maintained and not overfished. The Yapese employed a number of cultural practices (living heritage) related to fishing, and created a number of tangible cultural heritage, and together they form the Yapese maritime cultural landscape. This system employed a number of fish traps and weirs, with the tidal stone-walled fish weirs—aech—surviving to this day.\n\nYap has now four Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Yapese are aware that fishing is currently not implemented in a sustainable manner and are declaring ‘no catch zones’ in certain marine areas. Many of the studies associated with the need for and development of MPAs are largely science based, with little relevance and benefit given to traditional fishing (cultural practices and the material cultural). Traditional fishing practices using traditional ecological knowledge were carried out sustainably for hundreds of years and the incorporation of this knowledge into MPA management should not be overlooked.

The South-Western Alps, across Italy and France are an area of long-lasting and significantly dense presence of diverse intangible cultural heritage expressions, resulting from the peculiar forms of relation and adaptation between the communities and the mountain ecosystems. But now, this area faced a number of challenges, Alessio Re & Giulia Avanza introduced the projects for building up resilience on the South-Western Alps territory.

The Andong region has many highly renowned historic and cultural sites, such as Hahoe Village, however, the major cultural attraction of the region is the Andong International Mask Dance Festival.

The Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies (IPNGS) was established under the Cultural Development Act, passed by the Papua New Guinea House of Assembly on 14 October 1974. Papua New Guinea had become self-governing from Australia almost a year earlier, but independence was still about another year in the future. Today IPNGS is a national cultural institution under the National Cultural Commission Act. It moved to its present location towards the end of 1976. The distinctive welded sculptures on the outside walls and gates depict the Orokolo story of Aru Aru and his journey to the moon, as told by Sir Albert Maori Kiki.

This article briefly presents a framework designed to gauge the level of vitality or endangerment of music traditions and suggests how the tool can be used to inform music safeguarding activities across contexts. The framework is the Music Vitality and Endangerment Framework (MVEF), developed and first presented in my book Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help (Grant, 2014). The MVEF draws inspiration from various language vitality assessment tools, particularly UNESCO’s Language Vitality Framework (2003). In the absence of any such tool for gauging music vitality or endangerment across contexts, the MVEF was developed to fill this gap.

This paper begins by reviewing the current implementation of the 2003 Convention at the international level, notably its ratification status and the inscriptions on its two lists—the Urgent Safeguarding List and the Representative List—as well as on the Register of Best Safeguarding Practices. It then examines how procedures to process nominations and inscriptions on the lists and register have been improved and rationalised since drawing up the first version of the Operational Directives in 2008.The paper takes note of the significance of the capacity-building activities undertaken by the UNESCO Secretariat. It then addresses the implementation of the Convention at the national level on the basis of the First Periodical Reports on the implementation of the Convention that have recently been submitted to the Committee. Various fundamental issues are brought to light.Finally, the paper discusses the importance of distributing tasks among the three East-Asian Category 2 Centres for the implementation of the 2003 Convention in the Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and Japan and underscores the significant roles that have been entrusted to the information and networking centre in the Republic of Korea.

"Papua New Guinea’s population is made up of at least 875 cultural groups. Given this high degree of cultural diversity, Papua New Guinea is rich in many cultural forms. Unlike other parts of the world where there are monuments and other structures that form the main body of cultural heritage, Papua New Guinea has mostly intangible cultural heritage. \n Recognising the important value of intangible cultural heritage to its people, the government of Papua New Guinea is interested in properly managing and maintaining its heritage. Over the last hundred years, there have been a number of instruments implemented for managing and maintaining culture, but until only recently, there had been nothing in place specifically for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. What is in place so far in this regard has been developed in only the last four years. \nBackground \nCulturally, Papua New Guinea shares many traits with other groups in the Pacific and South-East Asian region due to the historical connections it has with these two parts of the world. In itself, Papua New Guinea’s cultural history dates back to about 30,000 years, the earliest dating of human presence in the country. \nWhile most of the country is currently populated by non-Austronesians, who are believed to have arrived later in history, some parts of the country are inhabited by Austronesians, who were the earlier inhabitants of the region. The culture of Papua New Guinea is then seen in terms of the two main divides and they forms part of the basis for the work in the country’s cultural sector. \nThe culture service in Papua New Guinea has been in place since the British and German colonial eras, dating back to the early 1900s. This early legislation was mainly concerned with the protection of indigenous cultures forms of primitive art, which was lucrative for the colonists. These protective instruments were mainly "