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The Government of Flanders of the Kingdom of Belgium and UNESCO signed a partnership agreement in 1988, creating UNESCO/Flanders Trust Fund. The focus of the cooperation is capacity-building and the construction of a knowledge society.
In 2009, the Flemish Government began supporting the field of intangible cultural heritage by financing “a A series of pilot projects in community-based intangible heritage inventorying on a grassroots level in six selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa” ($275,000 USD). In 2010 and beyond, the Flemish Government intends to strengthen its support for safeguarding intangible heritage by funding more capacity-building in Africa and the development of concepts and materials for a travelling exhibition on the theme of intangible heritage and sustainable development.
In April 2010, the Flemish Government contributed to the exhibition entitled ‘Recognizing Our Cultural Heritage: an American and Flemish Dialogue’
A series of pilot projects in community-based intangible heritage inventorying on a grassroots level in six selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa07-2009/01-2012, Botswana - Lesotho - Malawi - Uganda - Swaziland - Zambia
The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage aims at safeguarding living heritage. Unlike tangible heritage that is conventionally managed by heritage experts (e.g., architects, archaeologists, and conservators), intangible cultural heritage requires a participatory approach to safeguarding involving various stakeholders, most important of whom are the communities concerned. Among the obligations of States Parties to the Convention, the one that is expressed in strongest language is the duty to elaborate one or more inventories of the intangible heritage present on their territories with the participation of the communities concerned. An effective strategy to ensure the active participation of communities in the implementation of the Convention is to have them inventory their own Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The project, composed of four phases, is to conduct a series of pilot Intangible Cultural Heritage inventory-making activities on a grassroots level in six Sub-Saharan African countries, namely Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda, Swaziland and Zambia. Six pilot communities (one in each country) will be selected in a demand-driven manner. This initial training workshop in Lesotho (15/20-02-2010 - Maseru), will be followed by similar ones in other countries and subsequently continued through several months of fieldwork in each country separately by the communities and cultural officers to inventory Intangible Cultural Heritage. Follow-up sessions will be organized to evaluate the quality of exercises and improve methodologies.
The project is timely and necessary considering that the strengthening of capacities for establishing inventories in Member States is one of the expected results of the UNESCO Major Programme IV: Safeguarding living heritage, particularly through the promotion and implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Through the project, it is expected that national authorities together with communities would be able to devise cost-effective tools and methodologies to inventory Intangible Cultural Heritage which may serve in the future as a model for nation-wide Intangible Cultural Heritage inventorying exercises. The project is expected to assist the beneficiary countries in safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage in line with the Convention.
The project is coordinated by UNESCO office in Windhoek, supported by the Intangible Heritage Section and UNESCO offices in Harare and Nairobi.