Trainees give self-introductions at the class.

At the opening ceremony, the facilitators arranged a novel form of self-introduction: When each trainee introduced themselves, they selected an ICH element from the Philippines and shared it with others. It turned out this approach greatly boosted the interactivity between the trainees and allowed the facilitators to carry out the workshop in a more tailored way to local conditions and each trainee’s needs.

This picture shows an overview of the 2019 capacity-building workshop for the Philippines.

This picture shows an overview of the 2020 capacity-building workshop for the Philippines.

The workshop served as a means to introduce knowledge under the framework of the 2003 Convention, share ICH safeguarding experiences in emergency situations and discuss safeguarding plan development and public policy formulation.

In light of local circumstances and the COVID-19 pandemic, workshop organizers have developed for the first time an extended, three-part schedule running from Dec 13 2021 to early April 2022. The first part is the opening ceremony and self-introduction. The second part, going from January through March, is the time for the trainees to self-study and to do research under the guidance of facilitators. The third part is an intensive online training session running for three to four days in early April.

As a UNESCO category 2 centre in the field of intangible cultural heritage in the Asian-Pacific region, CRIHAP has been deeply involved in implementing the UNESCO global capacity-building strategy for the safeguarding of ICH and promoting the 2003 Convention. It also has been committed to providing capacity-building training services in ICH to 48 member states in the region. To date, CRIHAP has organized a total of 59 ICH capacity-building workshops covering 41 countries and regions, with 2,009 direct beneficiaries from the Asia-Pacific region.

(Original Chinese story by Dong Jingru; translated by Zhu Linyong)