Today Aigine CRC team held the first workshop within the framework of the project “Digital Journey to ICH of Kyrgyzstan”.
Representatives of 8 domains of the national list of ICH elements of Kyrgyzstan – oral folk art, traditional music, traditional rituals and festive events, traditional cuisine, traditional crafts and trades, traditional games, knowledge and practices related to nature and the universe, pilgrimage practices and rituals related to sacred sites – were invited to participate in the project and the workshop. Also, representatives of two peoples living on the territory of Kyrgyzstan – Dungan and Uyghur – have been invited to participate in the project. Thus, a project working group and a project monitoring group will be established within the framework of the workshop.
The purpose of the workshop is to familiarize the project participants with the project plans, activities and expected results of the project.
The overall objective of the project is to create an interactive multimedia digital platform (website) of ICH elements with comprehensive information on the 2003 Convention, ICH communities, active stakeholders, safeguarding activities and audiovisual materials.
The first thematic cluster of the platform will include:
- a) pilgrimage practices and sacred sites in Kyrgyzstan inventoried during the previous Aigine CRC project;
- b) seven interactive video infographics on the main concepts and basic texts of the 2003 Convention;
- c) a modernized electronic national list of ICH elements with a mechanism for monitoring safeguarding activities and a list of ICH communities.
The second thematic block will focus on the ICH elements of two (2) ethnic groups living in Kyrgyzstan – the Dungans and Uyghurs – through a community-level inventory. Documentation of ICH elements of ethnic groups in Kyrgyzstan have not been done before, so this will be the first inventory of Dungan and Uyghur ICH.
The project “Digital Journey into the World of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Kyrgyzstan” held a working meeting on November 17, during which the project team, working group and monitoring group held a joint meeting. All data and lists of ICH elements collected by the working group members for each cultural heritage section were presented to the monitoring team. The participants of the meeting expressed their opinions and pointed out the identified shortcomings in the collected information. After making updates to the data, the lists will be approved and digitized.
