The Kyrgyz komuz is a national musical instrument. Traditionally, komuz was made from a single piece of wood. The instrument has three strings, which were traditionally made from dried ram innards, but in modern times, fishing lines are often used instead.

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.

Khon is one of the most significant performing arts of Thailand. It is an important traditional dance and art style dated from the Ayutthaya period. It has its own unique identity and integrates different fields of art, literature, rituals, and crafts.

This paper begins with illustrating the vulnerability and resilience of Pacific island countries (PICs) to put intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding in a broader context of sustainable development for the Pacific region. The paper first presents a summarised history of the Pacific World Heritage Programme and the progress of its implementation since the adoption of the World Heritage Convention in 1972. It then outlines the development of the Pacific ICH Programme since the preparatory phase of the ICH Convention, adopted in 2003, to the organisation of multi-stakeholder consultations in seven PICs in 2010 and 2011. The paper identifies two tasks: i) organisation of consultations on ICH safeguarding and ii) elaboration of a mid-term strategy for ICH safeguarding in the Pacific. As a conclusion, the paper presents a strategy to focus on the contribution of Pacific ICH to the achievements of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and other internationally agreed goals such as Education for All (EFA). The paper argues that this could be done by building upon on-going good practices and by strategically highlighting the central role of ICH in achieving\nsustainable development of communities.

- Children should not build a birdhouse in order to learn the Pythagorean Theorem.\n- Children should learn the Pythagorean Theorem in order to build a birdhouse.\n\nTouch. Feel the texture. Smell. Duplicate a shape, a pattern or a color. These are examples of what we call "action transmitted knowledge." A young lumberjack once stood quietly, observing the older man whose job it was to load the logs onto the long lumber sled and drive them to the mill. The older man had his own way of moving, he nearly danced with each log, lifting it, rolling it a little, using small motions to push it this way and that. Until quite suddenly everything was in place, ready to be transported on the sled. One day the young lumberjack saw that the older man had brought his five-year-old son with him. The boy walked behind his father, watching him and doing exactly what he did, easing a log, dancing with the load, mimicking each of his father's movements. At that moment, the young lumberjack realized that he was observing a transmission of knowledge from father to son.

Kathmandu Valley is well known for bricks, bronze, and woodcraftsmanship. Bricks, wood, and mud mortar are the main building materials of the vernacular architecture. Be they palaces, the houses of nobles, merchants, or the common people, the building materials and styles are similar. Increased wealth and position is evidenced in houses depending on their size, as well as elaborate windows and woodcarving. Wood is one of the main building materials as beams, doors, door and window frames, and stairs are all made from the wood (Tonna et al., 2019).

Torn apart by decades of conflict, post-2003 Afghanistan was on the brink of an economic, social, and cultural collapse. Besides the much-mediatized shelling of the country’s material heritage, such as the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan’s intangible heritage equally took an untold toll. In addition to various practices that had been directly targeted and proscribed (such as making the rubab, a short-necked lute), a general weakening of the national economy, disruption of raw material procurement networks, and an overall destruction of the social fabric put a majority of Afghanistan’s heritage at risk. Particularly threatened were its craftsmen, the stewards of woodcarving, goldsmithing, or miniature techniques, skills firmly rooted in more than 3,000 years of artistic traditions and defining features of many of the country’s communities.