The rich folklore of the Kyrgyz people is an important historical and cultural phenomenon developing over many centuries and spiritually and artistically valuable. As an inexhaustible source of people’s wisdom, it reflects the history, life and social, political and spiritual ideals of the people. The oral folklore is the basis of our unique cultural heritage. Due to the harsh conditions of the nomadic life, endless clashes with enemies and invaders, and long distances of migration, the Kyrgyz people have not preserved their spiritual culture in the stone monuments of architecture, papyrus or clay writings but have preserved it in their memory for more than two thousand years of history. Memory proved to be good enough for keeping millions of lines of epic songs and works, which have been passed from generation to generation and reached the present day.

Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked country the territory of which is more than 94 percent mountainous, is among the most attractive lands located at the heart of Asia on the ancient Silk Road trade routes. The cultural heritage of the Kyrgyz people has been greatly influenced by their nomadic history. Kyrgyz people occupy a unique cultural environment and have a rich ICH. The vitality of this cultural heritage is safeguarded and transmitted from generation to generation as collective memory, orally or through practice and expression.

The oral tradition of the Kyrgyz people is the basis of a unique intangible cultural heritage that reflects Kyrgyz cultural identity. Oral heritage, developed over centuries, depicts the history and culture of the Kyrgyz people. Their creativity has been proven to survive exclusively in an oral form for many generations. This oral tradition represents a unique layer of traditional knowledge, making it a valuable source of cultural and traditional values and evidence of the development of the sociopolitical history of the Kyrgyz people. Kyrgyz oral heritage takes a wide variety of forms, including songs, fairy tales, proverbs, and riddles. These can all be different in terms of content and structure. Depending on the genre, oral tradition can reflect history, legends, fairy tales, or lore, which can be important in educating younger generations about the value of peace, attitudes toward nature and people, and love for the motherland. Many traditional oral works portray the main characters as defenders of their native land, arousing a sense of pride, and also depict the rich nature of the Kyrgyz land, nourishing love for their home. Some elements of oral tradition such as songs and folktales tell the stories or the specificities and peculiarities of the everyday life of Kyrgyz people. Folktales also reflect the esthetic views of the Kyrgyz people and teach us to recognize beauty, rhythm, and skillful use of language.\n

Relative to the creative economy of South Korea, the importance of the Eurasian Turkic states is growing. The reorganized resource-rich countries of the Eurasian continent, ancient nations belonging to the Silk Road, have established themselves from the beginning of the 21st century as political and economic powers in the international arena. CIS countries such as Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan were protagonists of the great Silk Road that linked the East and the West that had been cut off from each other in ancient times.

In September 2015, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its ambitious and far-reaching 17 Goals and 169 targets with an endeavor to build on the earlier Millennium Development Goals and complete what the MDGs did not achieve. The focus of the 2030 Agenda remains ensuring peoples’ well-being and dignity, fostering common prosperity, protecting the planet, and building peace, and these through mobilizing global partnerships.

For Cambodians, like many peoples in Asia, rice is indispensable and firmly attached to socio-religious life of the people. Besides being the principle daily staple, rice—either husked or unhusked, cooked or uncooked—is a necessary ritual material in every religious ceremony. Interestingly, rice is considered to be female in gender. By nurturing an individual person in the form of cooked rice, she is considered Preah Me (August Mother). In addition, rice is venerated in the form of a goddess called Neang Propei.1 She is worshipped for good harvest and prosperity. \nNeang Propei is no doubt a local adoption/adaptation of the Indian God of Wealth and Prosperity, Vaishravana. Such complex socio-religious aspects involved with rice demonstrate how important rice was and is in everyday life of rice-farming commu-nities, concerning how to obtain enough rice for each year. Besides various techniques and tools that were created, rituals and games are also performed to reassure suffi-ciency of rice. For Cambodian rice-farming communities, those rituals and games are associated with animistic beliefs or are animistic oriented. Examples of these include Loeng Neak Ta, Da Lean, and Chlong Chet.2.

Storytelling is an important aspect of the human experience. Through stories, we learn, we share, we feel, we express, and we remember. And in the Pacific, stories serve as the thread that connects us with our places. Our stories hold lessons of the strength, struggles, and solidarity that shape the identity all Pacific Islanders, as well as the accumulated knowledge, world views, and ways of knowing developed through firsthand engagement with our environment. However, while critical to survival in our places, our stories and the knowledge held in them are not always valued in school. This leaves a gap in education that alienates communities from classrooms and young learners from the collective wisdom that would guide them into a thriving future.

Water puppetry is identified widely as an artistic form that has sprung from the characteristics of particular landscapes and the lives and shared stories of their communities. In the Red River Delta (RRD) in Vietnam, it is documented as having developed in the rice-growing area in the tenth/eleventh century (Dunning, 1996 2021; Gaboriault, 2009), with the first physical evidence of performance held in the Th\nầy Temple, Hà Tây Province, during the Late Lê (Ly) Dynasty (1428–1778). The inscription on the Sùng Thiên Diên Linh stone stele (tablet) of 1121 at the Doi San ̣Pagoda, Duy Tien District (around 50 kilometers from Hanoi), provides evidence of water puppetry based on stories that reflect local lives and livelihoods and mythical creatures such as the golden tortoise, fairies, and flocks of birds and animals singing and dancing (Hai, 2006). Water puppet performance is a collaboration between puppeteers, musicians, the audience, and, \nimportantly, the character of the staging and spatial context of the performance within water landscapes. Today, performances generally consist of a series of short vignettes based on stories of traditional delta life and livelihoods, commonly interspersed with folk tales and mythological characters.

2003 UNESCO 무형문화유산보호협약(The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage)에 의하면, ‘무형문화유산’이라 함은 개인, 집단 및 공동체들이 그들의 문화유산의 일부분으로 인식하는 실행, 표출, 표현, 지식 및 기술뿐 아니라 이와 관련된 전달 도구, 사물, 유물 및 문화 공간 모두를 의미한다. 나아가 무형문화유산의 범위와 관련하여 동협약은 ①무형문화유산의 전달수단으로서의 언어를 포함한 구전 전통 및 표현, ②공연 예술, ③사회적 관습·의식 및 제전, ④자연과 우주에 대한 지식 및 관행, ⑤전통공예기술을 예시적으로 나열하고 있다.\n\n이러한, 무형문화유산은 세대를 거쳐 사용·경험에 의하여 전승되어 온 ‘정보’로써, 사용되는 과정에서 개량(innovation)이 추가된다. 이러한 개량은 무형문화유산의 본질을 변화시키지 않는 범위 내에서 그 가치를 증가시키는 행위이고, 전통이라고 하는 본질은 계속 유지된다.4) 따라서 무형문화유산은 전통성과 동시에 날마다 생성된다고 하는 현대성을 갖는다. 이러한 무형문화유산의 특성은 무형문화유산의 지적재산권제도에 의한 보호를 곤란하게 하는 요인이다. 또한 이러한 유산의 대부분은 공유(公有, public domain)에 해당할 것이다.5) 기존 유산을 개량하는 경우, 개량된 부분은 사적영역(private domain)이 되기도 하지만 다시 관행을 통하여 공유가 된다. 무형문화유산은 전통지식(Traditional Knowledge), 전통문화표현물(TCEs/EoF; Traditional Cultural Expressions/Expression of Folklore)과 마찬가지로 인류의 공동유산(common heritage)으로 취급되어 그 “보전”에 초점이 맞추어져 왔다.\n\n전통지식(Traditional Knowledge)은 광의로 사용되는 경우와 협의로 사용되는 경우가 있다. 협의의 전통지식이란 “자연과 밀접한 관계가 있는 것 중에서 집단에 의하여 세대를 거쳐 배양된 농업적 지식, 과학적 지식, 기술적 지식, 생태학적 지식, 의학적 지식 및 생물다양성에 관한 지식의 총체”를 말하며 기술적 측면이 강하다. 현재 WIPO에서는 전통문화표현물의 개념을 포함하는 “광의의 전통지식”의 보호에 대하여 논의되고 있다. 특히, 유전자원과 밀접한 관계가 있는 “협의의 전통지식”은 특허와 관련하여 논의되고 있다. 광의의 전통지식이란 협의의 전통지식에 전통문화표현물의 표현, 언어적 요소(지리적 표시), 심볼, 동산문화재(미술공예품·민속자료·역사적 자료) 등을 추가한 것을 말한다.8) 한편, 최광의 개념으로 사용되는 유산(heritage)은 “광의의 전통지식” 뿐만 아니라 인간의 유전자정보, 성지와 유적·사적지 등과 같은 문화재, 선주민의 생활을 기록한 사진 영화 등을 포함하는 매우 넓은 개념이다. 본래 인류의 공동유산은 자유로이 접근, 이용할 수 있는 것으로 취급되어 왔으나, 최근 선진국가의 기업이 풍부한 경험, 정보 및 자금력을 바탕으로 인류의 공동유산을 소재로 하여 연구개발을 행하고 있으며, 그 연구성과를 지적재산권화하는 사례가 발생하고 있다.

The epic Manas occupies a central place in the spiritual culture of the Kyrgyz people as a consolidating factor of the ethnos and basis for self-identity. The significance of the epic in the treasury of human heritage was recognised by the world community in 1995. The resolution ‘On celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the Kyrgyz National Epos Manas was adopted at the 49th session of the UN General Assembly carried out by UNESCO and UNDP. The 1000th anniversary of the epic ‘Manas’ was celebrated on the international level with the participation of more than 60 countries. A number of exhibitions, festivals, and conferences dedicated to the epic ‘Manas’ were held in Turkey, China, USA, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Belarus and other countries. The inclusion of Manas on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2013 was the next important step in the recognition of the Epos as World Heritage.

In May 2007, the director of Memória Imaterial met José Craveiro. The University of Minho organised the IX Story Days, in Braga. Craveiro was one of the invited storytellers and José Barbieri was presenting MEMORIAMEDIA, a project dedicated to the study and inventory of expressions of intangible cultural heritage. During the break for lunch when the two of them went together to the university canteen, Craveiro interrupted the conversation to identify the plants that spontaneously grew in the outer spaces of the campus. It was at this time that José Barbieri realized that Craveiro was not only one of the most influential storytellers of the traditional Portuguese tales but also a specialist and practitioner of traditional medicine. The desire to work together on this subject was born there, and they promised each other that this project would happen at a future date. \n

The artistic world of traditional culture of Central Asian peoples is determined by contents that lie in certain historical periods and, at the same time, remain outside history. Contemporary science allows us to study the originality of the art of people in Central Asia, which is important for an objective reconstruction of the general picture of the art’s evolution. Historical and social changes cannot be studied without a clear understanding of cultural integrity and the perception of the artistic laws of culture and its context in this or that socio-historical period.