Janakaraliya, led by veteran theatre personality Parakrama Niriella, works across Sri Lanka with different ethnic groups. Janakaraliya is a cooperative member of International Theatre Institute of UNESCO. It is a\nbilingual collective of youths trained in all skills necessary for drama production, which moves from one location to another with their collapsible tent hall, performing plays to audiences, who otherwise have no access to such recreation. Janakaraliya is an experimental process in applied theatre with stage plays taken out of their traditional proscenium stage into an arena platform and placed within a circle of audience creating a closer interactive experience for the audience.

The South-Western Alps, across Italy and France are an area of long-lasting and significantly dense presence of diverse intangible cultural heritage expressions, resulting from the peculiar forms of relation and adaptation between the communities and the mountain ecosystems. But now, this area faced a number of challenges, Alessio Re & Giulia Avanza introduced the projects for building up resilience on the South-Western Alps territory.

Bhutan is considered one of the culturally and spiritually richest countries in the world. Culture and traditions being resultant of the evolution of human civilization, they have developed according to the socioeconomic needs and conditions of the Bhutanese people, as well as within the physical and environmental constraints and opportunities of the place or the region. But most importantly, their origin is deeply rooted in Buddhism.

I started the Manipuri Theatre group when I was 20 years old. Our first production was held in Ghoramara, and the experience and feelings of it were inexplicable. The word ‘theatre’ was alien to us until then. We realized that the villagers were not accustomed to such an indigenous production. It was not like traditional folk theatre on religious tales—the subject delved into vagaries of everyday life and struggle. However, the idea was incepted in a casual way. At that age, our usual recreation was sports or picnic. Drama production had never been an option. The idea came from watching traditional Manipuri religious drama Ras Leela.

Recalling the excerpt from the 2003 Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Convention, "intangible cultural heritage ...is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history..." ICH is about people's values, particularly people's harmonious relations with nature. When our body is not in balance in the Philippines, healers or doctors take our pulse or pulso. \n

Heirloom Naga is a design-based firm of Nagaland that was formed in 1992. The organization promotes and exports native Naga textiles, jewelry and artifacts. It retails at most of the high-end domestic stores in India and exports to countries such as USA, UK, France, Spain, Chile, Japan, and Germany. The design team trains the local artisan to weave designer textile products and create decorative items with their traditional crafts. The Heirloom Naga Journals documents the step-by-step process of creation behind the Heirloom Naga textile pieces and different handicraft products. The documentation team also concentrates in looking at the lives of the artisans and the traditional Naga techniques that are still being practiced in the state of Nagaland.

The intangible cultural heritage of any nation and ethnic group depends upon a locality, environment, business way of life, language, and condition of cultural history that is very diverse and unique. Thus, the intangible cultural heritage of any nation symbolizes their identities and constitutes an integral part of the world culture. The Mongolian nation and its ethnic groups are an inseparable part of the global population. The Mongols and their ancestors have lived and moved from place to place on the vast territory from the Altai Mountain ranges to the Khyangan Mountains, from Lake Baikal to the Chinese Great Wall. This area is a part of the vast and grassy Eurasian plain that stretches for several thousand kilometers from the Danube River to the Korean peninsula, and on which animal husbandry–based nomadic cultures and agricultural farming–based sedentary civilizations long co-existed.

Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) provides a continuous link between the past, present and future. Every country flourishes with distinct ICH elements which needed to be safeguarded and transmitted from one generation to another. Weaving is one of the ICH elements that has thrived and intertwined knowledge systems, creativities, customs and belief systems of different cultures around the world. Communities identify their cultures through their traditional costumes which were handwoven using ancient weaving techniques.

On this beautiful day of the harvesting season in autumn, when hundreds of fruits and grains are ripening and trees in the mountains and fields are tinging maple colours, I am very delighted and filled with the feeling of great honor that our Centre of UNESCO for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia and Pacific Region (ICHCAP) is privileged to host this year International Conference on Safeguarding ICH to reflect on the creative values and productive utility of our intangible heritage that our forefathers have inherited to us.

The traditional martial art concerned here is divided into two currents belonging to the same founding lineage: 心意拳 (lit. Intention Fist boxing) and xingyiquan形意拳(lit. Form and Intention Fist). It saw significant development in northern China, especially in Shanxi Province, during the middle of the 18th century, and in Hebei Province at the beginning of the 19th century. Today, both styles are practiced well beyond China and are presented in various traditional or sporting forms. The traditional practice is composed of ritual initiations, alchemical, curative, and psychophysics exercises closely linked to the ancient Chinese concepts of cosmological thought and folk religions. The combat techniques (bare hands and traditional weapons) embody popular warlike traditions hypothetically attributed to the handling of a military spear dating back to the 12th century in Henan Province.\nWhat is historically certain, however, is that this art was deeply influenced by the merchant culture of Shanxi Province from the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century (Liu and Qiao, 2014). Thanks to migratory movement along ancient Eurasian trade routes in late imperial China, it has progressively become an inherent part of the local knowledge of trade caravan organizations called 鏢局. The mutual influences between martial art and merchant culture have brought about the emergence of new social category, 鏢师. They shaped local knowledge that comes in a variety of forms and contextual applications: communicative competence and jargon for cooperation (Chircop-Reyes, forthcoming), trade and veterinary sciences, handcrafts, visual capacity, hearing ability, olfactory sensitivity, and defensive skills.

Bhutan is a treasure trove of rich and unique tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Bhutan’s distinctive and often sacred cultures have been preserved and passed down through the generations. Today, the country is recognized for its unbroken and untainted immemorial cultural inheritance. One of the components of Bhutan’s varied intangible culture was royal court dances performed to entertain kings and their entourage at the palace.

The Andong region has many highly renowned historic and cultural sites, such as Hahoe Village, however, the major cultural attraction of the region is the Andong International Mask Dance Festival.