Intangible Cultural Heritage. Examples of the implementation of the UNESCO 2003 Convention in selected countries under comparison.

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.

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.

The reports has been published in Finnish (link to Finnish publication). Here you can download a extensive English summary and recommendations based on the report.

 

 

13 European countries were selected for closer study: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden, and Turkey. Two countries were also included from outside Europe: The Republic of Korea and Mexico. The study examined what kind of measures the selected countries have carried out to implement the convention and who the central actors in the process have been.