Intangible Cultural Heritage

The Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage was adopted at the UNESCO General Conference in 2003. 161 states are now (2015) parties to the convention. In Finland the convention was ratified in May 2013.

The Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture assigned the responsibility for implementing the convention to the National Board of Antiquities (www.nba.fi), to draft a model for its execution in Finland. CUPORE collaborated in this work in the context of research. Based on the research and hearing of stakeholder groups, the National Board of Antiquities drafted a proposal in spring 2015 for the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture on how the convention will be implemented in practice in Finland.

In the first research phase Cupore conducted a comparative research on the implementation of the convention in other member countries. Another objective of the comparative study was to find interesting examples of the elements inscribed on the intangible cultural heritage lists, with the purpose of creating a roadmap for a Finnish model for implementing the convention and fostering intangible cultural heritage more generally as well. A ten-page summary and conclusion have been published of this repot in English.

In the second phase Cupore wrote and edited a final report, based on stakeholder surveys and hearings, on how the comvention could be best implemented in Finland. Also, a draft criteria on selecting elements of intangible cultural heritage for safeguarding in Finland was developed in the report. This final report has only been published in Finnish (“Living Intangible Cultural Heritage”, link to Finnish report).