Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet country, lies in the heart of the Tien Shan Mountain Range and the mountains of Ala-Too in Central Asia. This small country is mostly inhabited by the once-nomadic Kyrgyz people who take great pride in their whitecap mountains and ancient culture.

The Heritage-Sensitive Intellectual Property & Marketing Strategies, India (HIPAMSINDIA), focuses on intangible cultural heritage (ICH) practices, such as craft, dance, musical performance, storytelling, and painting. These practices give communities a sense of identity and belonging. The sale of products created by ICH practice can also create jobs and income. However, many communities in developing countries like India experience significant difficulty preventing the appropriation of their heritage by others, for example through mechanization of production methods. Conventional intellectual property (IP) rights, such as copyright, patents and design protection, offer limited protection to the authors of original creations or new inventions that cannot easily be used to protect cultural expressions whose authors are unknown, and which have been passed down through the generations, changing and adapting to new contexts. This project engages with three Indian ICH practices—Baul and Fakiri music, Chau dance, and Patachitra traditions to investigate how developing ‘heritage-sensitive’ IP protection strategies can give communities greater control over the commercialization of their heritage while contributing to its safeguarding and on-going viability.\n\nHIPAMSINDIA has put together an extensive toolkit that focuses on heritage safeguarding and sustainable development. This toolkit aims to help communities who want to promote their heritage products and services in the market. It will be most helpful to those who have already entered the market and wish to refine their approach. It offers some ideas that can be used to maximize benefits and mitigate risks, for example around over commercialization.\n\nThe toolkit is available for download at http://hipamsindia.org/research-output/toolkits/\n\nPhoto : HIPAMSINDIA Poster Image

ARHI is a collaboration of individuals belonging to the indigenous groups and activists working for the cultural and educational rights of indigenous people in Northeast India. Folk Culture Research Centre or FCRC–a unit of ARHI—works with a mission to protect the cultural and educational rights of the indigenous people and to preserve and promote the rich cultural heritage of the different ethnicities of Northeast India. Their range of current and future work plan include preservation through visual media, audio, video, documentary film on distinct indigenous cultures, publications of indigenous folk culture, organizing workshops and fellowship programs. FCRC works for safeguarding language, oral traditions, textile and traditional knowledge in medicine through documentation and skill transmission.

Aliisher Navoi Institute of Language and Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan was formed in 1934 based on the Philology Department of the Scientific Research Institute for Cultural Transformation (1931—1933).

Language is the most crucial element of culture. It is the most distinctive accomplishment of humans, marking them off from other animal species. But, being made literally of mere thin air, language is also the most intangible among man’s cultural acquisitions. It has taken humans about half a million years to develop this unique skill that has so profoundly determined how human societies are formed and how they carry out communication among themselves as well as how they hand down the collective knowledge from one generation to another. This greatest cultural acquisition of man has come under an unprecedented stress in our time. It is estimated that out of the approximately 6,000 living languages, a majority shall disappear in near future. UNESCO has already started bringing out inventories of ‘world languages in danger.’

"The Cultural Heritage Administration plans to designate tteok making (떡만들기), Korean rice cake making, as National Intangible Cultural Heritage. The designation will recognize the making and sharing of Korean rice cakes as a traditional culture and way of life.\n\nKoreans have made tteok by steaming grain flour in siru, a traditional steamer, or by boiling or baking, depending on the type of the rice cake being made. From a long time ago, Koreans have enjoyed making and sharing different kinds of tteok for major milestones in their lives as well as for important national holidays.\n\nHistorically, rice cakes have been a key offering for various rituals. They include rites held for village gods wishing for peace and prosperity as well as similar rites held for house gods like sangdalgosa. Rice cakes are also offered at gut rituals held by traditional shamans. In modern-day Korea, people distribute tteok to others in their community when they open a business or move into a new place.\n\nIn many ways, tteok is more than just a delicacy—given that Koreans distribute rice cakes to others for special moments of their lives, it can be considered an embodiment of sharing and generosity as well as a symbol of the unique Korean concept of jeong or a deep connection and harmony.\n\nIt is also notable how different types of rice cake are made for different occasions and how they have a story of their own. This makes tteok intangible cultural heritage that people need to learn to fully understand Korean culture.\n\nIt is unclear when Koreans started making rice cakes. However, archaeological findings show that Koreans have been eating rice cake since ancient times. Siru has been unearthed in historic sites of the bronze age and iron age. Siru can also be seen in the mural of fourth-century Anak Tomb No. 3 in South Hwanghae, North Korea."\n\nPhoto : Two women shaping tteok CCBYSA World to Table / Wikimedia

Founded in 1909, Dalian Maritime University (DMU) is a Project 211 National Key University and an International Maritime Organization (IMO) Centre of Excellence. Known affectionally as the “cradle of navigators,” DMU has, since its inception, produced more navigators than any other Chinese institution. DMU is, without doubt, the beating heart of China’s maritime industry. Following China’s ratification of the 2003 Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2004, and in recognition of the critical need to preserve China’s navigation culture in the face of globalization and social transformation, DMU established the Centre for Maritime History and Culture Research (CMHCR) in 2008. Charged with safeguarding China’s navigation culture, CMHCR has, over the past twelve years, grown to become home to more than twenty-one associated experts, drawn from disciplines as diverse as history, archaeology, heritage, languages and linguistics, translation and interpretation, marine engineering, navigation science, and technology. This short article will highlight the vital work of this safeguard\u0002ing pioneer.

The parent organization of CEE Himalaya is the Centre for Environment Education (CEE), which was established in August 1984. CEE is a national institution with its headquarters in Ahmedabad and has been given the responsibility by the central government of promoting environmental awareness nationwide. It undertakes demonstration projects in education, communication, and development that endorse attitudes, strategies, and technologies that are environmentally sustainable.

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

The Foundation for the Protection of Natural and Cultural Heritage is a UNESCO-accredited NGO located in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. It was established in 2000 with the objectives of protecting and safeguarding various natural and cultural heritage elements, including intangible heritage values, and carrying out various activities for researching, studying, and promoting natural and cultural heritage properties and ICH values.

The intangible cultural heritage of the Tajik people has seen a long history of formation and development and has grown in multiple ways and expressions and forms. These intangible cultural forms have always played significant functional role both in the everyday life of the people in past and today. The Research Institute of Culture and Information (RICI), located in Dushanbe city is the first and basic institute where the requirements and goals of 2003 Convention are implemented. RICI is engaged in the study and research of national culture, the problems of library science and the country's media. The researchers of this Institute currently work on six scientific projects; one of them is related to the intangible cultural heritage, which is titled "The current state of intangible cultural heritage in the country: problems and prospects", duration of which is 5 years, from 2016 to 2020.\nIn 2017 in the RICI was founded "Center of Cultural Heritage of the Tajiks", which now employs 10 researchers. They are conducting research mainly on the intangible cultural heritage. One of the priorities of this Center is the identification, inventory making, and preparation of the nomination files and the study of the intangible cultural heritage of the people of Tajikistan. In this direction, the main goal of the Institution is to contribute to the preservation and dissemination of the intangible cultural heritage of the population of the country.

Federation of Handicraft Associations of Nepal was established in 1972 to enhance and promote handicrafts trade and industry. It is a service-oriented non-profit organization working with the private sector and the artisan community. It helps its members to improve their productivity, explores markets and introduces them to the international arena. It also acts as a liaison agency between its members and the government and other non-government organizations. The aim of the federation is to work towards a steady growth of handicrafts trade and industry. They encourage Nepalese artisans to adopt handicraft production as their profession by preserving Nepalese cultural heritage.