Online Seminar on Cultural Diversity and Global Citizenship Education (GCED)

As in other societies, the family may be the smallest social unit but holds the highest priority in Kyrgyz culture, so the making of a family is very important in Kyrgyzstan. This is why in Kyrgyz society wedding ceremony is an important event. The Kyrgyz traditional wedding requires an understanding of soiko saluu, kyz uzatuu, kalym, sep beruu, and nikahh kyiuu among others.\n\nThe traditional Kyrgyz engagement ceremonies include the following. The kuda tushuu tradition is the compulsory visit of the groom’s family to the bride’s house where the bride receives a pair of golden earrings (soiko saluu) from the groom’s family for the official engagement. In addition, the groom’s family needs to pay kalym (bride price); it can be in the form of either money or livestock. Moreover, there is kiyit kiygizuu (a gift exchange) of mostly clothes, between the bride’s and groom’s family. These are all the of the Kyrgyz people.\n\nAfter, there is the kyz uzatuu tradition, a custom to say goodbye to the bride by holding a feast and preparing sep (dowry). Accordingly, the bride is taken to groom’s house through a special rite and respect. However, the practice of ala kachuu (bride kidnaping without the bride’s consent) is not part of Kyrgyz traditions. Traditionally, bride kidnapping meant an arranged marriage when a loving couple agreed to marry but the bride’s parents were against the marriage. In today’s Kyrgyz traditions, however, the understanding of bride kidnapping is very much distorted. Therefore, the practice is illegal, which leads to criminal liabilities. A legal and socially acceptable Kyrgyz traditional wedding incorporates rituals in which the bride and groom marry with respect and honor.\n\nOther wedding customs and rituals are performed in the groom’s house, where the official celebration takes place, such as welcoming the bride and displaying her dowry. The groom’s family present a white scarf to the bride as a symbol of blessing. The bride usually spends several days behind koshogo (curtain) while the visitors come and present different scarfs to see the new bride. Lastly, in the nike kiyuu tradition, a Muslim ceremony, the mullah reads a prayer and asks the couple of their consent to marry.\n\nNowadays, a mix of traditional and western styles of wedding is common in Kyrgyz society, incorporating decorated cars, visits in famous sites, and a feast in restaurants.\n\nPhoto : Kyrgyz Wedding Rites. Inspection by the Groom. Circa 1860s. by Aleksandr L. Kun, 1840-1888

In the context of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, a wide field of NGOs is active in between governments and communities to translate concepts, facilitate and support safeguarding programs, advocate bearers’ perspectives and interests, etc. In doing so, they often turn out to be key actors for successful heritage processes engaging communities.

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.

Tugging rituals and games survived in Ukraine from different epochs, keeping a deep ethnological sense and didactic use. Through decades and centuries, tugging traditions, which later formed the basis of different sport competitions and educational exercises related to tugging, have been modified, reflecting changed environments and social demands. As a rule, they constituted an important part of rural street (open-air) life and entertainment as well as public festivals associated with calendar or religious holidays, like Kolodiy, Masliana, and Stritennia (Pancake Week, Shrovetide, and Candlemas Day, respec-tively) and Midsummer Day, Christmas, Easter holidays. A lot of popular customs from pre-Christian (pagan) times passed to the Christian holidays and have continued until now. Obviously, as a recognized researcher of folk life, V. Skurativsky, wrote, the ethnographic term “street” to mean the ancient traditional form of youth entertain-ment that originated from the places of young people’s meetings.

In many cultures, there is a concept of expected gendered roles where people perform certain functions, parts, or kinds of a cultural or social activity according to their gender. Men are expected to be strong and masculine, and employ the roles which are more related to hard labor, leadership, and literacy. Women, traditionally, assume feminine and maternal characteristics and roles in supporting men in their social events. Although these notions of gender qualities and roles differ from culture to culture, it is often found that the traditional customs which dictate who can and cannot participate in specific parts of the culture are often bounded by gender stereotypes and taboos.

"The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (‘ICH Convention’ or ‘Convention’ hereafter) was adopted in 2003 and subsequently brought into force in 2006. The ICH Convention mandates signatories to use or mobilise various measures to safeguard intangible cultural heritage. \nEven though the Convention does not succinctly mention the elaborate legal measures for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, the intellectual property rights to protect intangible cultural heritage and its holders are implied throughout provisions of the Convention. To implement the Convention’s spirit, the Operational Directives clarify legal form as safeguarding measures by stating that: State Parties shall endeavor to ensure, in particular through the application of intellectual property rights, privacy rights and any other appropriate form of legal protection, that the rights of the communities, groups, and individuals that create, bear and transmit their intangible cultural heritage are duly protected…."

My presentation is called ‘New Trends and Directions in the 2003 Convention’ although it is a bit hard to say which trends are new because this is really the first round of periodic reporting we are getting. So what I want to do is give you a summary of the information received by UNESCO following the start of the periodic reporting process. So they are obviously new directions because this is the first time. Some results are surprising and unanticipated, and others are to be expected.

This paper is based on two phases of my work focusing on South Asian context:\n\n(i) my experience of designing an integrated heritage management programme and running it for the past five years, in which Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) has been a core concept; and\n(ii) my personal interest in rethinking the overall idea of education in general, and refining professional education for the heritage sector in particular.\n\nBoth of the above aspects have emerged from my engagement and exposure to the overall heritage scenario in South Asian contexts, hence this paper is a reflection on ICH pedagogy at least for the South Asian context. The paper explores the idea of ‘contextual learning’ as a feasible pedagogy that could be adopted in ICH education at two levels: first is to create professionals for safeguarding of ICH, and the second is to integrate ICH as resources both in early (child) education as well as professional education in general.

Dibya Jyoti Borah, President of ARHI introduces the role of ARHI in safeguarding of ICH. Established in 2008, ARHI is collaboration of individuals belonging to the indigenous tribe, activist working for the cultural-educational rights of native people. It is a wider platform for all indigenous communities to discuss and reflect upon challenges and problems faced by indigenous communities as well as finding the best means to address those concerns. It is a grassroots organization comprising all small & big indigenous communities.

Co-orgarnized by ICHCAP and Hue Monuments Conservation Centre (HMCC), this year’s Asia-Pacific ICH NGO Conference was held in Hue, Vietnam under the theme of ICH NGOs towards Sustainable Development of Communities.

Culture is chiefly perceived as a driving force for sustainable development in the UN’s action plan for people, planet, and prosperity entitled “Transforming Our World: 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’. In this context, there is a foreseeable strength in ICH to generate means for sustainable development. The following issues are considered as starting points of discussion: (1) the methods of aligning commercial activities with ICH safeguarding activities, (2) the possible risks to ICH viability and the ways in which they can be mitigated, and (3) the prospect of moving toward and maintaining a mutual relationship between ICH Safeguarding and development policies.\nKeeping the grassroots level highly pertinent in Session 3, we intend to put various NGOs activities at the center of the discussion, particularly in light of our pursuit to assess their presence in sustainable tourism development and eco‐tourism, looking into the possibility of expanding the role of NGOs in areas such as cultural mapping and gender equality. To end, a plenary discussion will be held. The outcome document will be circulated to share the discussion points of and lessons learned from the meeting.