The creation of life on Earth begins with mystery. In pursuit of understanding mysterious things, humankind gained one of their most valuable qualities—veneration of sacred. Understanding the link between mystery and sacred has existed since the dawn of humanity. The first lightning in the sky and thunder, sunrise and moonrise, and heat and coldness—all these were once mysteries that people worshiped as to unknown and sacred. The first forms of worship were to water, sky, and wind—early formations of sacred spaces. Therefore, knowing who designates this or that object is sacred or what the criteria is not possible because no one knows all the mysteries of creation. Objects or artifacts that people qualify as sacred spaces are those that remind us that we are not alone in the universe.

The traditional martial art concerned here is divided into two currents belonging to the same founding lineage: 心意拳 (lit. Intention Fist boxing) and xingyiquan形意拳(lit. Form and Intention Fist). It saw significant development in northern China, especially in Shanxi Province, during the middle of the 18th century, and in Hebei Province at the beginning of the 19th century. Today, both styles are practiced well beyond China and are presented in various traditional or sporting forms. The traditional practice is composed of ritual initiations, alchemical, curative, and psychophysics exercises closely linked to the ancient Chinese concepts of cosmological thought and folk religions. The combat techniques (bare hands and traditional weapons) embody popular warlike traditions hypothetically attributed to the handling of a military spear dating back to the 12th century in Henan Province.\nWhat is historically certain, however, is that this art was deeply influenced by the merchant culture of Shanxi Province from the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century (Liu and Qiao, 2014). Thanks to migratory movement along ancient Eurasian trade routes in late imperial China, it has progressively become an inherent part of the local knowledge of trade caravan organizations called 鏢局. The mutual influences between martial art and merchant culture have brought about the emergence of new social category, 鏢师. They shaped local knowledge that comes in a variety of forms and contextual applications: communicative competence and jargon for cooperation (Chircop-Reyes, forthcoming), trade and veterinary sciences, handcrafts, visual capacity, hearing ability, olfactory sensitivity, and defensive skills.

Chinese martial arts present a unique combination of bare-handed and armed fighting with calisthenics, breathing exercises, meditation techniques, and elements of traditional Chinese medicine. It was in the late imperial period of Chinese history (the Ming and Qing dynasties, 1368–1912) that folk hand combat became a multifaceted system with features that go beyond the narrow framework of mere fighting. The surviving textual sources attest that during the Ming–Qing transition period, martial arts were perceived by many practitioners as a religious practice. Daoists and Buddhists alike often turned to hand- combat training in striving to achieve various religious goals, be it spiritual enlightenment or immortality. However, as recently discovered textual evidence suggests, it was Chinese local religion that disclosed the most intimate relations to martial arts practice.\nAn inseparable part of Chinese culture, the Chinese hand-combat tradition was (and still is) deeply rooted in rural life, and manifested itself in a particularly vivid way in the religious customs and ritualistic activities of the Chinese village. Chinese local religion, a highly intricate system in its own right, contains an evident martial element. For example, it is strongly believed that the employment of direct physical force against malevolent supernatural powers is not only possible but is sometimes as effective as any other ritual protective means, such as (spells) and (talismans). The folk belief that humans can best evil spirits with their bare hands is reflected in literary sources as early as the fourth

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?

Torn apart by decades of conflict, post-2003 Afghanistan was on the brink of an economic, social, and cultural collapse. Besides the much-mediatized shelling of the country’s material heritage, such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan’s intangible heritage equally took an untold toll. In addition to various practices that had been directly targeted and proscribed (such as making the rubab, a short-necked lute), a general weakening of the national economy, disruption of raw material procurement networks, and an overall destruction of the social fabric put a majority of Afghanistan’s heritage at risk. Particularly threatened were its craftsmen, the stewards of woodcarving, goldsmithing, or miniature techniques, skills firmly rooted in more than 3,000 years of artistic traditions and defining features of many of the country’s communities.

Khon is one of the most significant performing arts of Thailand. It is an important traditional dance and art style dated from the Ayutthaya period. It has its own unique identity and integrates different fields of art, literature, rituals, and crafts.

Intangible cultural heritage is one of training contents at university level for students who are majored in Cultural Heritage Management, led by Cultural Heritage Management Faculty, Ho Chi Minh University of Culture. Besides conspectus knowledge, basic knowledge of the major, students also access to specialized modules such as: Identifying the values of intangible cultural heritage, research methodology in investigating intangible cultural heritage, Inventory of intangible cultural heritage, forms of intangible cultural heritage… \n\nOne important learning method of these major modules is experiment, field work and access to public through activities: \n\n+ Observational thinking: learning through observation of activities executed by the others or self - experienced, thinking and concluding the understanding from experiences; \n+ Conceptualization: learning through establishing concepts, synthesize, justify, and analyze what we have observed; \n+ Practical experience: learning through activities, behaviors, specific and hand-on acts, \n+ Experiment: learning through experiments, propose solutions for issues and make decision. \n\nLearning - through - experiment methodology is put on specific learning contexts. In this paper, we want to mention to the role of the Museum – as an effective learning context, a buffering step from theory to practice to access the public. This learning context is analyzised based on the exhibition of traditional crafts at Ho Chi Minh city Museum, and based on contextual models of learning proposed by two proffesssors of Oregon University: John Howard Falk and Lynn Diane Dierking.

We all need space to fully immerse ourselves in our work, whether it’s an office, a research lab, a café, or a transmission space. Only when we have secured an area in which we can focus on work, we produce a high quality of work. To this end, we select such spaces by ranking them according to criteria such as the floating population, demand, rent, condition, and infrastructure. An artist I know established a studio in the vicinity of Hongik University in Seoul, since it is a bustling downtown area with a large floating population of people involved in art and culture. One pottery artist launched a workshop in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, since Icheon has close historic ties with pottery to the point that there is a village consisting entirely of pottery workshops and factories. The space in which a person takes root for months—or even decades—can reveal much about their life and personality, while allowing visitors to discern what they are about to see. That is the true power of a space.

Azerbaijan is one of the oldest areas of human habitation, where people once lived in natural geological formations. In its territory, archaeologists have discovered caves where people lived as far back as the Paleolithic era. For centuries, architects accumulated knowledge and skills related to rational planning schemes and the constructional and compositional methods of building residential houses in the area. However, data on the development of residential houses in Azerbaijan have been available only since the eighteenth century. Although we have little evidence of the development of the residential house in Azerbaijan in earlier periods, there is little doubt that the houses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that have survived to the present time contain many features developed earlier.

Kathmandu Valley is well known for bricks, bronze, and woodcraftsmanship. Bricks, wood, and mud mortar are the main building materials of the vernacular architecture. Be they palaces, the houses of nobles, merchants, or the common people, the building materials and styles are similar. Increased wealth and position is evidenced in houses depending on their size, as well as elaborate windows and woodcarving. Wood is one of the main building materials as beams, doors, door and window frames, and stairs are all made from the wood (Tonna et al., 2019).