European countries are different from each other mainly because the historical and cultural contexts in which they developed through time and geographical space were unalike. An important contribution is thus made by the cultural factor, the traces of which are visible today in what we call cultural heritage. It is this cultural heritage that represents the treasure we have received from our ancestors, which forms the heritage of a people, a community, an ethnic group. Our ancestors have passed on various traditions, customs, festive events, rituals, knowledge, practices, relating to nature or even ways of expressing joy, sadness or languages, which we should preserve and forward to future generations. Europe's cultural diversity is preserved as long as we are able to protect and preserve each country's specific intangible national heritage.

A number of international organisations took an active role in creating the legal and regulatory framework for the protection of cultural and natural heritage. In the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, UNESCO defines cultural heritage as monuments, groups of buildings and sites of outstanding universal value from the historical, artistic and scientific point of view (UNESCO, 1972). In 1982, UNESCO decided to make the notion of heritage more complex, no longer being limited to a single monument, but to cover tangible and intangible works that express the creativity of a people, i.e. language, rituals, beliefs, literature and works of art, archives, libraries (Mitchell et al., 2011). Thus, according to the convention, heritage becomes a domain that incorporates two dimensions: a tangible (material) and an intangible (immaterial/social) one (Ahmad, 2006).

What we call today intangible heritage, it is an effort made by UNESCO since 1952 (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 2004). This effort has taken the form of international agreements whereby countries, through their representatives and experts, have implemented national heritage policies. These were finalised in 2003 with the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICHC).

In this convention we find the most exhaustive definition, presented in article 2:

The intangible cultural heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills — as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith — that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity (UNESCO, 2003).

The role and purpose of the ICHC was and is to encourage local communities, municipalities, NGOs, governments to undertake activities to identify, preserve and promote intangible heritage. This international legal safeguarding instrument has created the framework for the conservation of human creations that could disappear forever. Preserving these creations implies recognizing a community belonging to historical traditions but also exploiting them for economic purposes.

According to Smith & Aikawa-Faure (2009) ICHC objectives are:

• preserving human creations that could disappear forever;
• giving worldwide recognition
• strengthening identity
• enabling social cooperation within and between groups
• ensuring historical continuity
• increasing the creative diversity of humanity

The ICHC Convention came at a very important time when ICHC values had to be assessed since intangible cultural heritage cannot be measured and verified immediately, and its existence depends on transmission from generation to generation, that is, man-made media (Xiao, 2022).

Another legal instrument is the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (2005). By cultural expressions  we mean those expressions that result from the creativity of individuals, groups and societies, and that have cultural content (UNESCO, 2005).

Watch the video below to see the participants in our Finnish pilot discussing the UNESCO definition of intangible cultural heritage.

References

Ahmad, Y., (2006). The Scope and Definitions of Heritage: From Tangible to Intangible. International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol.12, no.3, pp.292–300.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett B., (2004) Intangible heritage as metacultuer production. Published by Blackwell Publishing.

Mitchell N., Rössler, M., Tricaud, P.M, (2011). Paysages culturels du patrimoine mondial, Ghide pratique de conservation et de gestion, UNESCO, pp.17.

Smith L. and Aikawa-Faure N. (2009) Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, book edited Key issues in cultural heritage. Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, London and New York.

UNESCO, Paris, Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003), https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention.

Xiao L. (2022) Intangible Cultural Heritage Reproduction and Revitalization: Value Feedback, Practice, and Exploration Based on the IPA Model, Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience Volume 2022, Article ID 8411999, 13 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/841199911.