Arts Flanders June 2014 Intangible Cultural Heritage moving out of the shadow

ICE (with the E from Erfgoed or hEritage) is the Dutch abbreviation of ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’: a 21st-century catch phrase that is here to stay. The UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003) has initiated a worldwide movement. After ten years, the text has been adopted and ratified by no less than 159 states. Right from the start, Flanders has embraced and actively supported these new developments, both internally and on an international level. In 2014 new significant steps are being taken.

Flemish researchers and heritage workers are in the forefront of reflection and practice oriented capacity building. Beginning in the Summer of 2014, a new UNESCO chair on critical heritage studies and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage is operational at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. This new research unit is actively seeking to collaborate with universities, academies for science, museums, archives, centres of expertise and other research units in other countries. In co-organisation with FARO, programs of capacity building in the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage are being facilitated in several regions in the world. For example, financed by the Flanders Fund in Trust at UNESCO, in 2014 an ambitious project is being carried out: Strengthening sub-regional cooperation and national capacities in seven Southern African countries for implementing the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

In addition to several items from Belgium on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (article 16 of the 2003 convention), the safeguarding ludodiversity program of Sportimonium has been selected for inclusion on the Best Practices Register (article 18). In November 2014, the proposal of the Flemish and the French Communities (Belgium) of safeguarding the carillon culture is candidate for inscription in that Best Practices Register. The international assessment by the IOS of UNESCO after ten years of the 2003 convention also identified some special activities. Just as with other aspects of heritage practices, the process and actors in the intangible cultural heritage world in Flanders is definitely moving out of the shadow of an ‘arts paradigm’.