Over the last two weeks of August 2016, Goa has been host to the Workshop on Creative and Cultural Industry of Goa and 2016 South Asia Sub-Regional Meeting of NGOs on Safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage for Sustainable Development. Globally acclaimed intellectuals from organizations and NGOs along with Goan artists, musicians and NGOs safeguarding and promoting culture and heritage discussed issues relating to intangible culture.
The aspect of intangible heritage includes culture passed on from generation to generation and the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage.
Music, folk dance, conflict resolving, cuisine, medicinal practices and many aspects of intangible culture were discussed and the idea of documenting, publishing, collecting, sharing, networking, restoring and digitizing intangible cultural heritage and successful models of sustaining intangible heritage were the core issues that the deliberations took up.
The Directorate of Arts and Culture under the leadership of Secretary Daulat Hawaldar and Director Prasad Lolyenkar hosted this conference along with officials of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), British Council, International Information and Networking Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia Pacific Region (ICHCAP), Kolkata based Banglanatak.com led the discussions who caught with the Herald for exclusive interviews.
The two-day meeting NGOs from India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldives speak about the newly introduced the UN agenda 2030 for sustainable development goals and exchanged working practices.
MOE CHIBA, from Japan is the programme specialist for culture at United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), New Delhi and to her credit has enabled and executed heritage based urban development, culture for rural livelihood and participation of person with disabilities in cultural development. She gives us insights as how, the government alone cannot be a partner to identify, preserve and formulate policy on intangible culture.
Until today, we’ve always looked at tangible heritage like monuments and historical structures. Why suddenly the whole aspect of intangible heritage?
Intangible cultural heritage includes practices, music, dance, rituals, festivals, and craftsmanship, knowledge of universe and nature and traditions and are part of the UN sustainable development goals besides poverty, climate, gender. Intangible cultural heritage define people’s ability, livelihood and skills across generations which needs to be preserved and passed on to the next generation. The UNESCO convention of 2005 clearly defines intangible cultural heritage and people need to be made aware of these aspects.
What is the role of governance in preserving intangible cultural heritage?
Intangible heritage is all about the creative industry and the local government’s support is critical but culture is a private people’s domain and bureaucracy will support but will ask the people what to do. This needs to be properly spelt out in a democratic system. People have talent in terms of culture and this cannot be mismanaged, so there needs to be a platform where people and governments work together especially in documentation.
Does globalization and modern industrialization come in the way of preservation of intangible cultural heritage?
The key amongst communities is recognition of traditional skills, promotion of culture and then a convergence of sorts where online marketing, developments in information and technology can be used to the benefit of intangible cultural heritage to promote, record, document music, folk art, dance. There are new demands and new clichés have to fought in preserving cultural heritage which requires more than one skill and globalization teaches us how to package and market our culture.
You think that English and a common language is also responsible for us to leave behind our traditions and culture?
Our traditions and culture across communities is a life time experience. Linguistic diversity is the need of the hour to keep our identity and community radio is something that can keep our traditions alive. We should not polities our culture firstly. Preserving culture is not a war against development, speaking a language of the developed world or not an issue against an elitist movement. Preserving our culture is nothing but keeping our identity.
You feel that tourism is also our weakness, since sometimes we believe lets preserve and restore to market to draw tourist?
There’s no concrete evidence of of how much is done and how much we do to restore and preserve our intangible culture and tourism is an indicator at times though it’s a double edged sword and could be the wrong reason why we preserve intangible culture. But we need to assess as to why we want to preserve our traditions.
KWON HUH, is a Korean national and Director General of the International Information and Networking Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia Pacific Region (ICHCAP) and is internationally known for his publications on strategy for ICH safeguarding activities and explains to us about finding a balance between preserving and marketing intangible culture through tourism.
What exactly does the ICHCAP do in the area of intangible cultural heritage?
We’ve built platform for information sharing with regards to intangible cultural heritage. The concept itself is new to a lot of people. Established in 2011, ICHCAP as part of the UNESCO encourages NGOs in their work of preserving and unearthing cultural heritage besides creating awareness amongst population and most importantly data building of culture fore reference of the future. We’re a family of the UNESCO and through information exchange we look to achieving the sustainability development goals.
What is the role of governance in preserving intangible cultural heritage?
I totally believe the onus is the local government in preserving cultural heritage and participation is the key of civil society. Preservation is important but needs to be done in a sustainable manner while safeguarding the rights of the people. Finding solutions is never easy for governments while trying to preserve culture in today’s developing world and the challenge here is to make a balance in policy. Japan, Singapore and Korea have some amazing systems in place to preserve intangible heritage that need to be studied. Environmental policies, educational policies of a government define preservation of culture and that is the significance of governance to harmonize these polices with preservation.
Do you think the younger generation leaning more on technology and the internet have turned away from culture and tradition?
It’s a double edged sword. There’s a generation gap and people no more live together. The old are left alone and cannot nowadays pass on their tradition and culture to the younger generation. Conflict also makes it difficult but at the same time information can be documented and shared better through technology and it’s easier to pass on information. The challenge is to create the right atmosphere to preserve what we learnt in the past.
You feel that tourism is also our weakness, since sometimes we believe lets preserve and restore to market to draw tourist?
Generating income through tourism by marketing culture and tradition is a dangerous message and we’ve seen how it fails in the long run. But all this happens when local governments don’t think their policies through and there are no strong voices amongst the people to advice their government as to the difference between preserving tradition and culture and marketing it to u the economy through tourism. Both are needed but with the right balance.
