Southeast Asia boasts an astounding assemblage of traditional performing arts, varied in form, style or genre, time or period, and geographical source. Through the performing arts people assert ethnic identity, a dignifying and unifying force in a community. A performing art tradition conjures continuity; it is history. To lose such tradition is therefore to lose history. Dance, like other performing art traditions, is the expression of a people’s soul captured in motion. To safeguard such forms, they must be studied and documented, including the artistic material resources, oral traditions, beliefs, and practices embodied in them. These traditions are not museum pieces, but art forms that must be nurtured as artifacts that grow or transform as societies change.

"I would first like to thank the International Information and Networking Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region under the auspices of UNESCO for its excellent initiative in organising this meeting regarding the notion of sustainable development in relation to intangible cultural heritage. I have known Korea for more than thirty years now. I have always been impressed by the way in which your country manages to reconcile tradition and modernity, how, in respect of its heritage and its roots, it has preserved its traditional forms of expression and assured their development while promoting contemporary creation that is indissociably linked to the specificities of Korean culture. That’s why I have always cited Korea as an example to be followed and respected. And for this reason, over the past four decades, I have worked to make the intangible cultural heritage of Korea better known in France. Thanks to the support of Professor Kim Jeong Ok and the directors of the Korean Cultural Center in Paris, I have presented to French audiences, since 1974, several dozen performances such as Bongsan Mask Dance, Pansori, Sungmu, Salp’uri, Ssikkim Kut, Son Mu, Court Dances, Gagok, Samul Nori, different types of puppet and theatre performances, and so many others, offering a better understanding of the culture of your country to audiences who had been unaware of its richness. In this keynote speech, I will simply touch on a few issues that, I am sure, "

Community participation in identifying, inventorying, managing and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is a central tenet of the Convention (e.g. see Article 11(b) and Article 15). States can involve communities in various activities under the Convention (this is discussed further in Participant’s text 7.4 below). However, the Convention and the ODs do not give precise indications about how to identify the relevant communities, groups and individuals. Nor do the Convention and the ODs give much guidance about how to involve them in actions concerning their ICH. This gives considerable leeway to States Parties to respond to their specific situations. It is, for example, equally possible to start by identifying specific ICH elements and then work with the people who practise and transmit them (who would be defined as part of ‘the community concerned’); or by first identifying communities and then, together with them, identifying their ICH.

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.

This Book is the outcomes of the 2021 Expert Meeting for Building Network on Maritime ICH, which is held on 29 October 2021.\n\nThe expert meeting was co-organized by ICHCAP and SPC under the theme of Maritime Living Heritage: Coastal Communities in the Asia-Pacific Region and Their Traditional Food System.\nThis meeting consisted of two sessions with the different approaches to the costal communities and their traditional food system; ecocultural approach and socio-cultural approach. This book contains nine case studies of experts and scholars.

Cultural Space of Gong in Central Highlands covers all the fertility red soil in the territory of 5 provinces including Kông Tum, Gia Lai, Đắc Lắc, Đắc Nông, and Lâm Đồng. \nIt is the place where the Ba Na, the Gia Rai, the Ê Đê, the Xê Đăng, the Jẻ Triêng, the Mạ, the M’Nông, the Cơ Ho, the Brâu, the Rơ Măm,… have been residing for a long time. These ethnic groups live in small villages named pơ lây, buôn, bon and living mainly by agricultural cultivation, animal husbandry and benefitial resources of the nature.\n

The biggest North Korean migrant community outside East Asia is located in a somewhat unlikely place, New Malden, UK, a suburb in southwest London (see Figure 1). Approximately 1,000 North Koreans live alongside the established community of over 12,000 South Koreans. In the foreign kitchen, what North Korean migrants do is recreate authentic traditional North Korean food that they have not had for such a long time. Decades of famine and national isolation have alienated people from basic meals and dishes that are part of the history and traditions of their country.

It had taken the Solomon Islands forty long years to host the most prestigious regional cultural event in the Pacific, the Festival of Pacific Arts (FOPA). The Festival brought to the Solomon Islands about 2,500 dancers, artists, and other cultural practitioners from twenty-two countries in the region to share, interact, and display the uniqueness and diversities of their Pacific cultures and traditions in the context of a changing Pacific.

This publication contains papers from the 2021 World Intangible Cultural Heritage Forum held online for three days, from September 29 to October 1, 2021. The event was hosted by the National Intangible Heritage Center and organized by ICHCAP.\n\nThe forum was held under the theme of “Rediscovering Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Era of Convergence and Creativity” to re-examine the creative value of intangible cultural heritage and present the possibilities by examining examples of innovation and value creation through intangible cultural heritage.

The Maranao are a southern Philippine ethno-linguistic group living along the fringes of Lake Lanao in the Lanao provinces of Mindanao. The Maranao are best known for their love of beauty as shown in their ukil art, poetry—the epic Darangen, inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List—and the torogan, the grandest type of Philippine architecture.

The lion dance is a performance art known throughout East Asia, in which practitioners wear lion masks. It is thought that the lion dance was introduced in Japan as a religious play together with Buddhism in the seventh century. The dance tells the story of a lion with magical powers that played a role in expelling evil from the path on which the spirits travel. Today, it is a much-loved performance used to celebrate auspicious occasions, to bring peace, happiness, health, and long life. It is also commonly performed in New Year celebra\u0002tions and festivals. Several entertaining performance groups traveled around performing the lion dance during the Edo period, which gave momentum to the spread of the dance all over the country. The dance is light and has strong recre\u0002ational characteristics including acrobatic elements.

The Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA) is a regional, non-governmental organization that assists museums, cultural centers, national trusts, cultural departments and ministries, cultural associations, and arts councils. PIMA acknowledges the richness of the Pacific’s ICH and has undertaken some successful initiatives to support ICH safeguarding.