Webinar on Aigine’s Experience with Youth Involvement in Heritage Safeguarding:

This week, the final session of the “Voices of Local Communities” webinar series, organized by the Pawanka Fund, took place. The Aigine CRC team shared its experience of engaging schoolchildren from remote regions in studying and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage. As part of the “Uluu Toolor” project, teenagers collected stories from elders about rituals, petroglyphs, medicinal plants, and the events of 1916. The webinar opened with the sacred ritual “Erkek Sham” performed by Chynar Seydakhmatova. The ritual was dedicated to the forgotten and unburied souls of those who died during tragic events across different periods.

Visiting the Zhaltyrak Tash Petroglyphs:

This week, Aigine CRC completed a three-day expedition to one of Kyrgyzstan’s most striking yet little-studied rock art complexes — Zhaltyrak Tash, located in the Bakai-Ata district of the Talas region. The expedition was carried out within a project supported by the Pawanka Fund to create a unified database of Central Asian petroglyphs. A distinctive feature of this initiative is its focus on the intangible aspects of rock art and the inclusion of local interpretations. The team documented rare images, including a panther with a tail shaped like a traditional Kyrgyz ornament, hunting scenes, depictions of a centaur, satyr, female hunters, yurts, and sacred symbols.