Caring for intangible cultural heritage

Intangible cultural heritage is a substantial part of what makes up our histories and identities, understood to be practices, ideas, insights and experiences.

What makes intangible cultural heritage amazing is that it isn't confined to historical practices, but also includes contemporary customs and traditions. Nor is it limited to mainstream or global phenomena: local practices of minority communities, too, are valuable expressions of cultural identity.

In the past, the importance of intangible heritage has not always been fully recognised and little effort was invested in documenting, preserving and sharing it. In fact, intangible heritage has often been used to accompany and explain tangible objects while it should be the other way around: intangible cultural heritage creates the necessary conditions for artifacts to be produced - for example, it’s because of impermanent performances that theatres were built.

Recently, intangible cultural heritage has started to gain attention from researchers, museum professionals, policy makers and audiences alike.

There's a growing awareness of the importance of cultural legacies, as they show the ways in which people come together to connect and to express themselves. Moreover, cultural practices form a vital element of a community's identity. Knowing about each other's traditions creates a backbone for how we interact with each other and helps us to understand differences as well as discover similarities and shared values.

There's a certain urgency about the heightened interest in intangible heritage: often, traditions and practices are passed on from individual to individual or generation to generation - a knowledge transfer chain that is strong and fragile at the same time.

Because of globalization, industrialisation and environmental challenges, intangible collections - like any other type of heritage - risk damage, destruction and even disappearance. It's therefore more important than ever to invest in safeguarding strategies, making use of the knowledge we already possess and continuously evolving new digital technologies.

The advocacy of UNESCO as well as local, national and community-oriented heritage committees, have done a lot to raise awareness of the varied range of traditions and living expressions considered intangible cultural heritage. Furthermore, digital projects such as WEAVE amongst others are paving the way for the museums of the future, in which the physical and digital, the tangible and intangible jointly paint a picture of our past, present and future.

Their efforts foster a wider reflection about intangible heritage and how to take care of it, in turn revealing routes towards a more inclusive and diverse society.

This blog is part of WEAVE – Widen European Access to cultural communities Via Europeana, a project aimed at developing a framework to link the tangible and intangible heritage of cultural communities.