Introduction\nThrough the rich history of Persia, few cultural elements have remained intact, one of which is the art of narration. Ever since Aryans entered the plateau of Iran, they brought this way of performance art with themselves through which they would tell the stories of their ancestors and later the epics of their gods.\n\nThis play, which is a combination of narrating, solo-acting, singing, and an improvisation performance, is done in two ways: Open-Space (at squares, passages, farmlands, etc.) through which the stories were drawn on a scroll curtain that would be opened slowly in front of the audience, and Closed-Space (in coffee houses or mansions) in which the curtain was hung or mounted on a wall before the performance and covered by a contrast curtain to be removed from the main curtain when the narration starts.\n\nThe influence of this art was so great that it was used to motivate and encourage the army, and in the Safavid era, it was highly valued.\n\nThe Elements of Scene Reading\nThe main parts of this way of performance are:\n\nPreface or Pre-event (A lament to gather people)\nHymn (A song in which they ask God for help)\nMonaghab Khani (Merit Reading—Praise the family of the Prophet Mohammad)\nSpeech in the sanctity of the curtain\nOpening the contract curtain or the scroll curtain\nSermon Reading or the beginning of the speech\nStorytelling (Dealing with side stories)\nDescription of the main event\nEscaping (This will be improvised, based on how people are feeling, and the recent events)\nMonody and Requiem\nGiving the promise to tell a more joyful story on the next event\nPray for the audience\nTo fold the curtain\nThe Curtain\n\nThis curtain is a piece of fabric on which scenes of mythological stories, historical narratives, and even stories of the great prophet’s lives are drawn. There’s a believe that says seventy-two stories are drawn on the curtain but in reality, it does not include exactly that many. This belief is created in terms of the multiple stories and the large number of the images. It is on connection with this belief that a famous conversation happens in between the narrator and the audience; The narrator may ask, “how many stories and faces are drawn on the curtain?” and the audience replies “366 faces and 72 stories.”\n\nThe characters are drawn on a background of natural colors, the components together and the composition of the images are arranged in such a way that it conveys concepts through the role of the narrator and the story itself. The illustration of the good characters and the bad characters are painted differently; you may see the bad characters with elongated faces and the good characters with kind, round faces.\n\nBesides all these, the positioning of the characters is determined by their rank. If it’s the narration of a war, the soldiers are drawn smaller, without the usage of perspective or anti-perspective. The commander, the prince or, the king is drawn slightly bigger to show the distinction, which also includes their horses and ammunition. This illustration of the characters must be included and drawn stereotypically, and to give emotion to the characters, their body language is also drawn in such spectacularly, showing the feeling of pain or death. The characters are mostly painted with Qajar-style clothes. Even the emotion that lies within their eyes is uniquely painted; like if they show power or their weakness, if it’s comforting or terrifying, it is drawn in a realistically.\n\nIranian dramatic story-telling: Morshed Ahadi Photograph: Sa’id Azadi © 2005 by the Department of Traditional Arts at the Research Center of ICHHTO\nThe Scene Reader\nIt is not just the role of the curtain that will fascinate the audience but how the narrator tells the stories and leads the eyes on the curtain to drown the audience in the depth of the narrations on the background of the scene.\n\nHe is the person who tells the stories drawn on the scene. A singer and actor—someone with high physical ability and excellent creativity in improvisation who, with the usage of the stories, can play the role of all the characters.\n\nNow that’s the time when the magic happens—the narrator walks between the curtain and the audience, acting out each character, singing the poems and epic songs and telling the painted stories. As his voice tonnage changes and plays out the narrations with his hands and using his stick, and the moves he makes with his body, takes the audience deep into the scene, where the events are happening. All of a sudden, the audience feel no border between them and the scene, finding themselves in depth of the story, playing the role of one of the characters.\n\nPhoto 1 : Narration of Persia--2005 Department of Traditional Arts ICHHTO Research Center, Morshed Ahadi points to the part of the screen he is reciting its story\nPhoto 2 : Iranian dramatic story-telling: Morshed Ahadi Photograph: Sa’id Azadi © 2005 by the Department of Traditional Arts at the Research Center of ICHHTO

The 2018 inscriptions of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) on the UNESCO lists has raised again global attention to variations of Hindi-influenced masked dance in Southeast Asia, which retell the story of Rama, the god-reincarnated king who defeats the demon king Ravana.

It has become recognized nowadays that cultural heritage encompasses more than collections of objects or monuments; it includes just as much also intangible manifestations such as traditions and living expressions. This intangible cultural heritage (ICH) stretches into a wide range of domains of our society, such as performing arts, social practices, oral traditions, rituals and festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature, and the knowledge and skills used to produce traditional crafts.

Inside the Guam Museum’s multipurpose room, Chamorro oral historian Toni “Malia” Ramirez sits on a carpet of autumn tones along with a small group of young children. On the floor beside him are a world globe, a sprouting coconut plant, and a tray of local foods as diverse as the multicultural children seated—lumpia from the Philippines, Japanese-style omusubi, Korean kimchee, and Chamorro titiyas. On the back wall, a wire grid is covered with an assortment of t-shirts hung with plastic hangers. The t-shirts have phrases in Chamorro, the indigenous language of the Mariana Islands. In the tradition of Chamorro storytellers, Ramirez converses with the children, sharing memories he had collected over the years from Guam’s war survivors and their stories of life during the Japanese Occupation and Liberation in July 1944. The t-shirts, he explains, express cultural values that helped the Chamorros survive the atrocities of the war, values that are important even today. The t-shirt he wears is decorated with “Tåutau latti’ yu’, Guåhan, Islas Marianas,” asserting his pride as a “person of the latte,” and a native of Guam. With a song, the tray of food soon represents the cultural diversity of Guam home. As the session ends, the children and their parents wave Guam flags and sing “Fanoghe Chamorro,” the island’s territorial anthem. Ramirez has shared with the event’s participants important historical memories of Guam’s people, Chamorro cultural values, and lessons for good citizenship in a little more than an hour.

In introducing the background of building ichLinks as the Asia-Pacific ICH information sharing platform, its core values and objectives, implementation schemes, and expected effects are explained. ichLinks plans to serve as a common ground for all the participating Member States to connect with each other. ICHCAP plans to form a one-stop integrated online service platform and an expanded platform based on the participation of Member States by establishing an Executive Committee led by partner organizations from participating Member States for efficient platform operation. In addition, ICHCAP support will address differences and deficiencies resulting from different technological conditions among nations. These actions would help participating states and partner organizations voluntarily and actively using the platform and continue to create new value through multilateral information sharing, exchange, and cooperation. Information and content shared through ichLinks can be constantly recreated and reused as online and offline resources in areas, e.g. festivals, exhibitions, research, and tourism.

In calling for memory values to be considered anew in the escalating public debate on the World Heritage Convention’s definition of outstanding universal values, Francesco Bandarin, former director of the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, speaking as part of the Our World Heritage initiative, recently reminded his audience, “Heritage is not just beauty.” Indeed, it is so much more.

The Loden Foundation has identified ten ICH elements of Bhutan that are on the brink of disappearing as time passes. To preserve records of these cultural traditions and raise awareness of them among the people, the foundation aims to make documentaries about these elements with support from ICHCAP. \n

The Tao Foundation for Culture and Arts is a Philippine non-profit, non-governmental orga-nization based in Quezon City, National Capital Region, Luzon and in Agusan del Sur, Caraga Region, Northeastern Mindanao. Established in 1994, the Tao Foundation is led by an all-fe-male Board composed of Filipino scholars, artists, and Indigenous community leaders engaged in cultural regeneration initiatives in response to the five centuries of colonial and neocolonial histories and the need to help build strong cultural communities. The Tao Foundation’s mission is to (1) facilitate the exchange, transmission, and development of Philippine ICH/TCH; and to (2) contribute to the empowerment of culture bearers or those who possess ancestral practical and theoretical knowledges that have endured and transformed to remain relevant through colonial and neocolonial histories as a result of day-to-day and more large-scale acts of resistance.

In 2015, the UNESCO Bangkok Office published Learning with Intangible Heritage for a Sustainable Future: Guidelines for Educators in the Asia-Pacific Region, which included the results of a pilot projects conducted in four countries—Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and Palau—with the aim of integrating intangible cultural heritage and education for sustainable development. The introduction of this handbook begins with the quote from Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”

"It is not for nothing that the Pamir Mountains in the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region of the Republic of Tajikistan (GBAO) are called the “Roof of the World”—Ismoil Somoni’s peak reaches 7,495 meters. Pamir is characterized by huge permanent glaciers and narrow mountain ranges with sharp snowy ridges, and large lakes sitting 5,500 meters above sea level. The impenetrable mountain gorges go some way to explaining the emergence of an exceptional lifestyle, different languages, dialects, and monocultures. Currently, six of the oldest East Iranian unwritten languages are in use in the Pamirs: Shugni, Rushani, Bartangi, Yazgulami, Wakhi, and Ishkashimi as well as some Persian dialects and Kyrgyz lan- guages. The folklore of the Pamiri people is passed on not only in local vernacular, but also in Tajik, the official language. The Pamir highlanders have their own distinctive tradi- tions. A person from this region has their journey from birth to death accompanied by all kinds of rituals, customs, and traditions. Life events such as maternity, family and house- hold, wedding, marriage, holiday, and calendar production are marked, adding meaning to the highlanders’ daily life."

My initial research among Lach community in Lac Duong town, Lam Dong province, Vietnam started with my participation in a project entitled “Establishment of associated mechanisms for conservation of landscape biodiversity and cultural space in Lang Biang Biosphere Reserve, Vietnam,” headed by Southern Institute of Ecology (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology) in 2016. The project was successful to some extent in documenting characteristics of cultural spaces of ethnic peoples in the region and the reality of these spaces’ conservation in close relationship with that of biodiversity. Noticeably, being a world heritage, gongs cultural space was recognized as one of the crucial elements constituting the entire cultural spaces and cultural identity of local ethnic groups in the region and thus recorded as being imperative for conservative strategies and actions. These preliminary conceptualizations attracted me as an anthropologist to explore further insights into the socio-economic and cultural life of the Lach in the context of their daily life from 2017 to 2018. \n\nAs the people have been taking more active parts in their national and international integration, their social and economic spaces get expanded, adjusted and re-created. So are their cultural spaces in general and gongs cultural space in specific. This paper is to explore local gongs clubs of the Lach in Lac Duong town and gongs culture restoration activities at the parish church of Langbiang to reveal the fact that gongs cultural spaces of the Lach are far from static, fixed and in need of reservation. Rather, they are dynamic, inclusive and on the process of continuous meaning making as the result of the people utilizing their agency in creating initiatives and mechanism to practice their culture and transfer it to next generations. It is implied that by ways of local participation and community based training, cultural heritage can be prolonged and perpetuated itself alive.

Some say that one of the new paradigms representing 21st century is ecology. In a situation where nature is being rapidly polluted and destroyed, humans are just beings that interact with nature as part of the ecosystem. For all of us who are preparing for the post-corona era, the ecological crisis, which can be called as the crisis of humanity, has become a daily life. Current infectious diseases that have invaded human life are not irrelevant to the disturbance of natural ecosystems caused by climate change and environmental destruction. Changes in the natural environment have a great influence on the function of the ecosystem and the livelihood of mankind, and considering the biodiversity of the planet, there is a great deal of direct and indirect implications for the living creatures.