crafts
ICH Exhibition 2
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NEWS
Festival for Building Resilience
Shola craft at Surul © Banglanatak dot com
This year, 2021, is the Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development. banglanatak dot com, headquartered in Kolkata and specializing in culture and development, was supported by the British Council to hold the Ripples Festival—Reveling in the Rarh (https://ripplesfestival.com/) between 15 and 17 January 2021. The Ripples Festival promoted an interesting model of integrating heritage and place-making and develop responsible tourism where the local communities are positively impacted. Santiniketan at Bolpur, embodying the first Asian Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s vision of universalism and heritage sensitive development, is a popular tourist destination. The Ripples Festival created opportunities for people to interact directly with the folk artists and craftspersons living in the villages in and around Bolpur. It offered a rich experience of art, craft, beautiful landscape of river and red soil, along with exchanges of perspectives and ideas for building a resilient and creative future. Baul songs are inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Heritage of Humanity. They propound the philosophy of searching within and universal brotherhood to attain the divine. In the festival, the Bauls of Bolpur, Ilambazar and Joydev Kenduli, performed and shared their philosophy. Women held workshops and exhibitions on making Kantha embroidery—a quilting tradition of recycling old clothes and beatifying embroidery with simple run stitches. Craftspersons who make intricate crafts from the spongy white stem of the Shola plant held workshops. A theater festival, Tribute to Shakespeare, explored telling the timeless stories using traditional folk drama forms.
Raibenshe performance in About Caliban © Banglanatak dot com
The festival also reached out to art lovers through online components. The rural artists enjoyed their first opportunity of sharing their art form and village on a global platform. Videos and live interactions provided a unique experience to people connecting online. The webinars were held on the themes of Heritage and Festivals, Heritage and Creative Economy, and Heritage Resilience. The speakers were from India and the UK with extensive experience in theater, music, craft, and art as well as multicultural collaboration and exchange. They included Simon Broughton, Chief Editor of the prestigious Songlines magazine; designer, Amber Khokar; artist-entrepreneur, Ali Pretty; Dr. Joseph Lo with extensive experience in the world of craft; theater exponent, Parnab Mukherjee; founder of Tapantar, Kallol Bhattacharya, along with Dr. Debanjan Chakrabati and Jonathan Kennedy from the British Council. The webinars have helped in creating global awareness on the art forms and gathering international perspectives on key needs for building resilient creative economy. Different speakers stressed the need to look at festivals and heritage as integral components to fostering inclusive and sustainable development. The festival highlighted the importance of cultural collaboration and exchange for rejuvenating art forms and creating new markets and audiences. It empowered rural artists with new digital skills and highlighted technology’s power in bringing the world closer with online participants.
Ripples Festival video: https://youtu.be/CGdfuuAgYNI
03/12/2021
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NEWS
Held the 2nd ichLinks Executive Committee
The Committee meeting screen © ICHACP
The 2nd ichLinks Executive Committee was held online on December 9, 2021 (Thursday), from 2 pm to 5 pm (KST). Twelve Partner Organizations (Malaysia, Mongolia, Vietnam, Bhutan, Singapore, Uzbekistan, India, Kazakhstan, Cambodia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Fiji) participated and had a fruitful discussion.
The Committee was chaired by Dr. Rustam Muzafarov, Deputy Chairman of Kazakhstan National Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, who was elected at the first Committee meeting in June. The agenda discussed were as follows.
[Agenda 1] Share ichLinks Project Guidelines
[Agenda 2] Reports on 2020-2021 ichLinks support projects’ results and suggestions to improve ichLinks
[Agenda 3] Reports on 2021-2022 ichLinks support projects’ plans and suggestions to improve ichLinks
[Agenda 4] ichLinks’ mission, vision, roadmap and suggestions for future programmes (ICHCAP)
[Agenda 5] Adopt Operational Rules on ichLinks Executive Committee
Dr. Rustam Muzafarov, Chairperson of the ichLinks Executive Committee © ICHCAP
ICHCAP, the Secretariat of the ichLinks platform, shared ichLinks’ mission, vision and the 1st phase roadmap (2020-2025), and also explained each stage’s goals and activities. In addition, cooperative projects that all Partner Organizations can participate in was proposed. In particular, the programme for artisans’ networking to share good practices of sustainable development through modernization and commercialization of traditional crafts was supported by many Partner Organizations.
Proposed programme for exchange of traditional artisans © ICHCAP
Partner Organizations also proposed several cooperative projects such as joint research on shared ICH elements, multilingual translation of ichLinks content, and establishment of a common archive on the theme of traditional music and musical instruments. Furthermore, the Partner Organizations expressed great interest in the archive management package that is being developed by ICHCAP this year.
The Chairperson, Dr. Muzafarov expressed his special thanks to ICHCAP for initiating the ichLinks project. He mentioned that ichLinks opened a new chapter in the safeguarding of ICH. He also pointed out that the general public in Kazakhstan is starting to take an interest in ICH and understand the need to safeguard ICH through ichLinks.
ICHCAP plans to share the results of the 2nd Executive Committee with all Partner Organizations and hold a working-level meeting early next year as soon as the archive package development is completed. Also, the cooperative projects proposed during the meeting will be further elaborated and be implemented in collaboration with Partner Organizations next year.
12/14/2021