Folkland, International Centre for Folklore and Culture is a nonprofit NGO devoted to promoting folklore and culture. Headquartered in Kerala in south-western India, Folkland has three main centers and several chapters in India and associations with other organizations abroad through MOUs and collab-orative partnerships. Folkland has been affiliated with the UNESCO ICH sector since 2010. Folkland envisions a society that respects cultural heritage by conserving arts and cultural traditions and transmitting them to future generations. As such, Folkland is proudly dedicated to promoting Indian culture and values with a focus on intangible cultural heritage. The center provides access to knowledge and information about intangible cultural heritage and is known for promoting indigenous culture that inspires audiences to explore the cultural and artistic heritage of Kerala. The main domains covered by Folkland are performing arts; oral traditions and expressions; social practices, rituals, and festivals; and traditional crafts. Folkland documents oral traditions and practices and extends training to younger genera-tions to revitalize old and near-extinct traditional art forms. One ICH element of particular interest to Folkland is tolpavakoothu (shadow puppetry).

Dhamrai, the main center of metal casting in Bangladesh, is located about thirty-nine kilometers northwest of Dhaka, the capital city. A visitor to the quiet rural setting was once greeted by natural sounds and bustles of sounds, the clanging of metals, which made a wonderful rhythm of working melodies. This transpires the existence of metal crafts being an important part of Bengal’s rich artistic tradition that dates to before 2000 BCE on the Indian peninsula. History suggests that some of the greatest metal craft masterpieces of all times, made here by skilled artisans and sculptors, were magnificent in design, exclusivity of details, and workmanship. But over time, the cultural heritage, exceptionally rich in aesthetics and artistry, has fallen from its glory and only a few artisans are toiling to revive this millennium-old art form.

Chak-ka-yer is a Thai word similar in meaning to tug-of-war in western countries. It is one of the oldest folk team games in Thailand. Thai people across the country know chak-ka-yer, and many may have had some direct and indirect experience with this game, either as participants or observ-ers. Chak-ka-yer benefits Thai society in several ways. People use chak-ka-yer for fun, pleasure, recreation, and relaxation from their routine work. Chak-ka-yer is played between teams, groups, or communities to test their physical strength. The game does not focus on competition, team preparation, contest regulations, and championship, but rather on unity, friendship, morale, and incentive of communities. Chak-ka-yer as a game is related to thoughts, beliefs, customs, traditions, rituals, and values of the people in different areas. Chak-ka-yer is a high-level game of development and doesn’t focus on systematic contests; it has specific agency to respond to and has the team seriously trained and practiced to win the championship. Chak-ka-yer as a sport is left unmentioned in this article since it has become an international sport.

Bread making is more than a culinary tradition: it is an integral part of the Austrian Lesach Valley’s cultural heritage, which carries aesthetic, symbolic, and religious value for the community of the valley. Rituals, customs, and personal stories constitute the nature of the element and illustrate the high significance of the practice for the region.

"Block printing is a technique to create patterns on fabric using blocks. Ink is applied to the wooden or brass block, which is then pressed onto the fabric by hand to impart the design. These blocks are customized and carved intricately, and can be used to print a design of between one and six colors. Block making has been practiced in India for the last 300 years. Pethapur, about 33 km from Ahmedabad, in Gujarat, is home to a community of artisans who have been involved in making wooden blocks for years. Blocks from Pethapur are considered to be the best and earned the Geographical Indication (GI) Tag No. 585 in 2017. I had the pleasure of visiting with Satish Prajapati, a skilled craftsman in Pethapur, when he shared the history and process of block making with me."

This research explores the challenges faced by the government institutions in intangible cultural heritage (ICH) safeguarding and the future efforts government institutions can facilitate in involving communities in this process. The study addresses the lack of research done on ICH of the Maldives. Building on current debates regarding government and community roles, this research explores the partnership governments and communities can have in ICH safeguarding. The research is done in the context of the Maldives. \nThe study is conducted from a constructivist ontological stance coupled with an interpretivist epistemology. A set of three semi-structured interviews to senior officials were conducted in three institutions working on ICH safeguarding. Three additional interviews were conducted to gain feedback on the study’s topic from individuals who have expertise in the field of ICH. Data were analyzed using a priori and data driven coding following King’s (2004) template analysis method

Neolithic tombs prove that humans were living in Mongolian territory around 4000 BCE. A tomb with a man buried in a hole in a sitting position was discovered in Dornod Province and provides such evidence.

Azerbaijan is one of the countries whose history is inextricably linked with the Silk Road. From ancient times, the network trade routes connecting the east with the west and the south with the north crossed the territory of Azerbaijan.

Our current climate change crisis, termed the Anthropocene, has been tied to the history of the colonial plantation, capitalism, empire, nuclear testing, and a globalization era of disposability and waste. All of these histories have impacted (tropical) islands to a far greater extent than their continental counterparts, because islands have often functioned as laboratories for colonial experimentation, from the plantation complex of the Caribbean to nuclear testing in the Pacific. The climate crisis alerts us to the peril of living beyond our limits, yet islanders have long had to negotiate ecological crisis as well as find innovative solutions of sustainability and resilience in bounded lands and with limited resources.

This paper deals with traditional boat building in our country Traditional boat building refers to boats and other watercraft mostly using wood and other locally-available raw materials in our archipelago. The fabrication and construction methods as well as their operation draw largely from long term indigenous experience in traversing the inland seas in Southeast Asia, the South China Sea (West Philippine Sea) and the vaster Pacific and Indian Oceans. Boat building technology is part of the broader Malayo-Polynesian culture. The major components of this broad culture include the use of Austronesian languages, bilateral family structure, mutually-supportive clans and kinship groups that include maternal and patriarchal affines led by the most able chief. Most important feature of Malayo-Polynesian culture is boat building and sea faring that enabled them to disperse by 1,500 BCE from the core area in Southeast China, Taiwan, Malaya, Indonesia and the Philippines as far as the Madagascar to the west, east to Pacific Island Groups across the Pacific up to the offshore islands of Argentina in South America.

I would like to begin by extending a warm welcome to Francis REG, Head of Yap Historic Preservation Office, Federated States of Micronesia; Ratu Jone Naucabalavu BALENAIVALU, Senior Administration Officer of the Collections Team, Fiji Museum; Lynda Dee TELLAMES, Staff Historian of the Bureau of Cultural & Historical Preservation, Palau; and other esteemed guests who have come all the way from the Pacific to Korea for this workshop. I also express my heartfelt gratitude to Sang Kook KIM, Deputy Director at the Records Preservation & Restoration Center, National Archives of Korea; Bong-young KIM, Director of the Department of Planning and Administration, Korean Film Archive; and Minsun SONG, Senior Researcher at the National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage; and all the other presenters here today.

In Buddhism, deities and gods are imagined as either male or female. They can appear either calm and peaceful or fierce and frantic. Generally, the more peaceful gods are the deities of harmony, aesthetics, kindness, diligence, and so on whereas the fierce ones are the guardians whose role is to threaten and daunt the demons.