Telugu language is the mother tongue for carriers and transmitters in safeguarding the Intangible Heritage of the Telugu people. We have come up with an interdisciplinary and innovative educational programming that safeguards our intangible heritage of over 53.6 million people in Andhra Pradesh (AP). Our higher educational programming cuts across the five domains delineated in the 2003 ICH Convention of UNESCO. It is an integral part of a systematic safeguarding plan that is unique. I will introduce the framework that enables us to bring together the teaching of intangible heritage in a linguistic environment through six tertiary educational institutions for the Telugu speaking people. I am responsible for the curricula, pedagogy, employment of carriers and transmitters as teachers and performance education in all the six colleges. \n\nWe also address the interface between intangible heritage and language through higher education. Moreover, I will also reflect on my own engagement as a carrier and transmitter of theatre traditions of the Telugu people. My conclusion would advocate that we need to think in new and innovative ways for safeguarding the rich diversity of the intangible heritage of humanity. Our innovative tertiary education programming provides a feasible role model.

This networking program is based on experiences and achievements obtained from the collaborative work of UNESCO-ICHCAP in the living heritage field in Central Asia over the last decade.\n\nFor reference, the networking program comes on the heels of a three-party MoU signed by ICHCAP and organizations in Uzbekistan in 2019 and was followed by a Central Asia network meeting in Kazakhstan in 2019. In 2020, ICHCAP in cooperation with International Institute for Central Asian Studies (IICAS), conducted a survey project about ICH festivals along the Silk Roads, particularly with countries along the steppe route. Regarding the survey result, ICHCAP, IICAS and Korea-Central Asia Cooperation Forum Secretariat of the Korea Foundation (KF) held an online webinar and a strategic meeting to consider the need for realizing the multilateral values of Silk Roads-related cooperation

Southeast Asia abounds with astounding heritage sites and diverse ICH elements. However, due to the fast-paced development of modernity, heritage sites are at risk of deterioration while intangible elements face extinction. At the same time, mass tourism has also penetrated cultural heritage sites, significantly affecting the lives of local communities. As a consequence of poverty and lack of access to quality education, many of these communities have not been able to resist the commodification of their cultural heritage. They have often then seen their heritage being subjected to exploitative tourism practices, endangering the integrity of their way of life. In strong opposition to these tendencies, we believe that the cultural heritage of local and Indigenous communities can be a comparative advantage in Southeast Asia, helping such groups to achieve inclusive and sustainable development.

The culture in the East Coast of Malay Peninsula are rich in visual and performing arts inherited over time immemorial. The art is also found to have similarities in three different states, despite their geographical gap. The similarities are shared in dialects, languages, presentations, builds, and past legacy artifacts. The Malay craftsmanship is also dominated by the Malay community in the East Coast and it is also produced in the form of art and fashion. Artifacts such as boats, houses, and furniture are still visible until now and they have high artistic value. This paper is aimed at displaying the various type of Malay traditional boats and symbols produced by the Malay community on the craft of the boat. There are several name of the boats produced by local craftsmen based on their function and usability. For example, a small line boat is used in river and coastal areas, the payang boat used by deep-sea fishermen, and the jokong boat is used to transport heavy goods. The art can be seen in the carvings and paintings produced on traditional Malay boats craftsmen in the East Coast. This art does not only serve as an ornament and for its aesthetics, but also has its own symbolism. The decorative art produced shows that the three main aspects necessary in Malay art are function, aesthetics, and ethics. The belief in the existence of supernatural powers – which preserve and safeguard their safety at sea and their ability to get income from marine products – underpins the craft of this decoration art.

Ningyo johruri bunraku is a puppet theatre composed of three elements: the chanter, the shamisen player, and three puppeteers. Bunraku originated at the end of the sixteenth century and was first performed outside or inside makeshift theaters, but in the mid-seventeenth century, it began being performed in more prominent theaters in cities such as Osaka, Kyoto, and Edo (now known as Tokyo).

Ambalangoda, a coastal town of Sri Lanka, is famous for puppetry, handcrafted masks and mask dance. These art forms are practiced by the fishing communities of the region and the traditions have been passed down by generations, but they are now practiced by few people. The community has formed around 15 puppetry groups, collectively called ‘Puppeteers of Lanka’, to promote the art of puppetry in the country.

Water puppetry is identified widely as an artistic form that has sprung from the characteristics of particular landscapes and the lives and shared stories of their communities. In the Red River Delta (RRD) in Vietnam, it is documented as having developed in the rice-growing area in the tenth/eleventh century (Dunning, 1996 2021; Gaboriault, 2009), with the first physical evidence of performance held in the Th\nầy Temple, Hà Tây Province, during the Late Lê (Ly) Dynasty (1428–1778). The inscription on the Sùng Thiên Diên Linh stone stele (tablet) of 1121 at the Doi San ̣Pagoda, Duy Tien District (around 50 kilometers from Hanoi), provides evidence of water puppetry based on stories that reflect local lives and livelihoods and mythical creatures such as the golden tortoise, fairies, and flocks of birds and animals singing and dancing (Hai, 2006). Water puppet performance is a collaboration between puppeteers, musicians, the audience, and, \nimportantly, the character of the staging and spatial context of the performance within water landscapes. Today, performances generally consist of a series of short vignettes based on stories of traditional delta life and livelihoods, commonly interspersed with folk tales and mythological characters.

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).

Puppetry practices in Korea have been handed down in diverse contexts and various genres, from maeulgut (village ritual) and mudang gut (shaman’s ritual) which are ceremonial rituals of worshipping transcendental beings, to mask dances which were developed primarily for entertainment purposes. Various traditional puppetry plays have been developed as independent genres in these practices of puppetry in Korea. Moreover, the mainstream category known as kkokdu gaksi noreum as well as seosan parkcheomji nori and baltal (mask plays performed with the soles of one’s feet) have also been transmitted. Seosan Parkcheomji nori is a puppetry play of native clowns, which has been shaped by the influence of kkokdu gaksi noreum, while baltal is a mask play in which a puppet and a man measure their wits. As it appears, kkokdu gaksi noreum inspired other types of puppetry as it has been acclaimed as a representative example of Korean traditional puppetry.

Performed in villages and closely attached to water rice agriculture, water puppetry is a unique performing art and is the intangible cultural heritage of the Viet people in the Northern Delta region of Vietnam. Created in the tenth century, the first historical record on water puppetry was inscribed in an ancient stele in 1121 called the Sung Dien Dien Linh in the Long Dọi Buddhist Temple of Ha Nam Province. The inscription reads that water puppetry was performed to entertain the king on the occasion of his longevity ceremony.

Nestled in the cultural heartland of Singapore’s Chinatown, the Kreta Ayer Heritage Gallery is Singapore’s first community gallery that showcases different aspects of the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) of the Chinese community as well as ICH elements practiced by the arts and cultural groups located in Kreta Ayer.\n\nCovering a gallery space of 1,076 square feet (100 square meters), the Kreta Ayer Heritage Gallery was co-curated by the National Heritage Board in partnership with the Kreta Ayer Community Centre and officially launched on 14 July 2019. The gallery features a total of 123 artifacts, of which 68 are on loan from the community and/or arts and cultural groups operating in Chinatown.\n\nThe gallery is made up of five sections covering five ICH elements comprising Chinese opera, Chinese puppetry, Nanyin music, Chinese calligraphy, and tea appreciation. It introduces visitors to the history of the precinct and showcases the aforementioned ICH elements while tracing their evolution from the days of old Chinatown to contemporary times.\n\nThe first section on Chinese opera traces its popularity as a form of local live entertainment between the late 1800s and the 1930s and showcases the different elements of the form including costumes, music, and characters. It also covers opera houses that used to operate in Chinatown and the characteristics of different types of opera according to dialects.\n\nThe second section on Chinese puppetry explores the roots of the art form and focuses on the common types of puppetry practiced in Singapore, including hokkien glove puppetry, teochew iron-stick puppetry, hainanese rod puppetry, and henghua string puppetry. The section also features a mock-up stage where puppetry performances are given, and visitors can try their hand at operating stringed puppets.\n\nThe third section on nanyin music, meaning “music of the south,” traces the origins of the art form and features nanyin performances, instruments, and musical scores on loan from Siong Leng Musical Association. It also showcases different genres of nanyin music such as Fujian nanyin and Cantonese naam-yam.\n\nThe fourth section on Chinese calligraphy focuses on the roots of Chinese calligraphy and the Chinese calligraphy scene in Singapore. It also features the first generation of calligraphers in Singapore and explores how the cultural art form is still practiced in schools, community centers, and cultural institutions today.\n\nThe final section on tea appreciation explores the long history of Chinese tea, the establishment of tea houses and the act of brewing and drinking tea as a cultural art form. It also looks at the different types of Chinese tea and how they are typically paired with different types of cuisine.\n\nThe gallery also features interactive components that allows visitors to experience the different ICH elements on show. These components include a puppetry stage where visitors can test their skills as puppeteers, multimedia stations that allow visitors to experience playing nanyin instruments, and a Chinese calligraphy station that allows visitors to practice their calligraphy using “invisible ink.”\n\nFollowing its official opening, NHB and Kreta Ayer Community Centre is partnering with various arts and cultural groups in Chinatown to present regular programs, including Chinese opera, Chinese puppetry, and Nanyin music performances and workshops as well as calligraphy and tea appreciation classes for students and members of the public to promote greater awareness of these ICH elements and, where possible, facilitate the transmission of skills.\n\nWith the opening of the Kreta Ayer Heritage Gallery, NHB hopes to showcase the richness and diversity of the Chinese community’s “living” ICH, provide a platform for ICH practitioners and groups to showcase their skills, and create more opportunities to collaborate with community partners to showcase the heritage of specific precincts or estates as well as the history and heritage of different ethnic communities.\n\nPhoto : An interior shot of the new Kreta Ayer Heritage Gallery ⓒ National Heritage Board, Singapore

On 8 November 2018, ICHCAP’s Associate Expert B.B.P. Hosmillo interviewed Charis Loke, a teacher and artist from Malaysia, after the 2018 NGO Conference in Hue, Vietnam. Charis Loke is an artist programmer and junior trainer at Arts-ED Penang, where she designs and implements community-based arts and culture education for the youth. She also trains schoolteachers in incorporating cultural heritage into their teaching. The following is an excerpt from a two-hour interview with Charis Loke about integrating ICH into non-formal education in Penang, Malaysia.\n\nB.B.P.H.: How does your work relate to ICH?\n\nC.L.: At Arts-ED, we have facilitators, freelance cultural workers, and volunteers. We may not be able to articulate ICH in terms of how it is delineated by the UNESCO 2003 Convention as people working at Arts-ED are regular people, we have day jobs, but we know that where we are has a lot of tangible and cultural heritage. Our goal is to get the younger people to appreciate the values that ICH has. As you can see from our programs, we have some focused on transmitting art forms, where primary school children learn with master teachers. To a great extent, our master teachers reinterpret such art forms though they are still deeply connected to their roots. We are not really about continuing such forms in their original sense because our organization is founded on creative education in which reinterpretation is a viable method of teaching and learning.\n\nIf you ask what specific ICH element we are focusing on, we may perhaps refuse to pinpoint anything but rather suggest that our location, Georgetown, a multicultural place in Penang, is composed of many groups living together. When we do cultural heritage, we have to consider that these groups’ ways of life have evolved, and so the values present in Georgetown cannot be attributed to one ethnic group. We cannot say that this element or that is a Chinese cultural heritage or maybe it is Malay, so it is really hard to define and maybe locating the specificity or source of cultural heritage cannot really enrich that cultural heritage. What we do is integrate the values we know ICH has into subject contents and global issues. For example, a teacher may be asked to use shadow puppets as a tool to teach creativity and collaboration.\n\nB.B.P.H.: Your programs and activities are for free?\n\nC.L.: Yes, our students don’t have to pay.\n\nB.B.P.H.: And your students are mainly children?\n\nC.L.: Yes, but ICH practitioners in Penang are also involved. Actually, there are more people involved than we expected. For instance, some of our programs are done in a market community that’s been around for more than 120 years, so the market sellers and the market administrators can be involved, too.\n\nB.B.P.H.: Earlier this year, ICHCAP hosted an international symposium and network meeting with academics based in Asia-Pacific universities that have or will have degree programs and research initiatives concerning ICH. There has been wider efforts to integrate ICH into formal education, even the UNESCO ICH Chairs are basically entrenched within the system of universities mainly across the world. I think this is a reflection of how more visible and more pronounced the connection between ICH and formal education is. As somebody like you who is involved with integrating ICH into non-formal education, what do you want people to know about the work that you do as an agent of ICH safeguarding in the non-formal education sector?\n\nCL: Being in the non-formal education sector gives you a lot of creative freedom with how you approach the work of ICH Education. When it is not formalized, facilitators have more creativity to come up with teaching resources, and students can also have more creativity in response. This implies, of course, that even the larger community we are a part of gets to have a bigger room in our programs. Because of the freedom we get from the framework of non-formal education, we get to enjoy genuine interaction among those participating in our activities. More importantly, because there is deficiency in Malaysia’s education system, our work can also address the problems of content relevance or fill in the gaps between our culture and the present time that formalized training and schools tend to not be concerned about.\n\nphoto : Charis Loke speaking at the ICH NGO Conference ⓒ ICHCAP