Today, March 23, the Aigine CRC team took part in the third seminar for safeguarding ICH in the Asia-Pacific Research region. The seminar was organized by the International Research Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region (IRCI). The seminar discussed issues related to the transmission of ICH and various safeguarding measures.

Gulnara Aitpaeva, Director of Aigine CRC, and Cholponai Usubalieva-Grishchuk, Senior Project Coordinator, gave a presentation on ” Safeguarding ICH Element and Building a Bridge between the Community and the State Party: Manas Epic Heritage within the last 10 years”.

As part of their presentation, Gulnara Aitpaeva and Cholponai Usubalieva-Grishchuk described the state of the epic trilogy “Manas” in 2005-2010; the activities including Aigine CRC’s  to safeguard and transmit the epic heritage in the period from 2010 to 2013, such as the creation of a digital 67-hour version of the trilogy and school of manaschi; the process of inclusion of the epic trilogy in the Representative List of UNESCO; the activities to protect the epic heritage after inclusion in the Representative List of UNESCO; about the current state of the element after 10 years after inclusion in the UNESCO Representative List.

Renee Talavera from the National Commission for Culture and the Arts of the Philippines and Patrick Maundu from the National Museum of Kenya also took part in the workshop.

Renee Talavera spoke about the transmission of ICH through non-formal education: Schools of Living Traditions as a practice on the UNESCO ICH best practices list.

Patrick Maundu tells the success stories of promoting traditional foods and preserving traditional food traditions in Kenya.

The Forum has been established under IRCI’s research project, “Creation of the Asia-Pacific Regional Hub of Research for the Safeguarding of ICH”.