Publications
Keynote Speech 2: Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage to Strengthen Community Viability and Resilience
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Manage No DI00001053 Country United States of America Author Frank Proschan (Facilitator, UNESCO Capacity Building Workshop) Published Year 2017 Language English Copyright Attach File Preview (ENG)
Description | We are accustomed to considering how the participation of communities, groups, and individuals in safeguarding their own intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is both a practical necessity and an ethical imperative. Implicit in the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage is a bolder claim: that because intangible cultural heritage plays a vital function within society, its safeguarding is a powerful strategy for communities, groups, and individuals to fortify themselves in the face of rapid sociocultural, economic, and environmental changes. Theconvention is not concerned with safeguarding ICH for its own sake, and neither is it concerned with the past. Instead, the convention looks resolutely forward, its mission being to safeguard ICH as a means of strengthening the viability and resilience of the communities, groups, and individuals concerned. Our goal in safeguarding ICH is to ensure that future generations will continue to have access to the practices, expressions, representations, and knowledge that we enjoy today, and will remain able to utilize them to strengthen the social fabric of communities and groups, even as they face new and unforeseen challenges. |
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