PNT UNESCO Call En.pdf - Otain, Alaa

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Intangible Heritage and Creativity for Sustainable Cities, Community-Based Inventorying of Intangible Heritage in Irbid Project. Call for participants to attend a workshop on inventorying living heritage This document is an invitation to express interest in participating in a 7-day training workshop from on documenting living heritage with communities in Irbid. You are warmly invited to read this document and complete the attached form if you would like to be considered for participation. About the workshop and the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage The workshop is part of a wider project organized by UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. This Convention focuses on encouraging communities, individuals, organizations and governments to take an active interest in strengthening the transmission of cultural expressions from generation to generation. A key measure promoted by the Convention to achieve this is documenting living cultural expressions with the active involvement of the community members to whom it belongs. Living heritage, also referred to as intangible cultural heritage, includes a wide range of cultural expressions, such as oral traditions, performing arts, rituals and social practices, the know-how for the production of crafts and other cultural objects, knowledge about nature and the universe, and more. You can find more information on the definition of this heritage, and the 2003 Convention at this UNESCO Website: https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention This workshop focuses more specifically on documenting living heritage in urban contexts, as part of a wider project UNESCO is implementing in nine cities worldwide. Supported by the Yong Xin Hua Yun Cultural Industry Investment Group Co.,Ltd from China, the training is part of an effort to better understand how living heritage in urban environments is evolving, and how it can contribute to improving livelihoods and sustainable development. These questions are increasingly important in the context whereby populations are increasingly shifting to urban centers; a situation that creates both challenges and opportunities for the continuity and transmission of many living traditions. Community-based inventorying: what is it and why is it needed? This approach to documenting living heritage involves various techniques, from interviewing, audio- recording, photography, video, and others. It considers community members as active participants in the process. Through their active engagement in the process, efforts to better understand how living heritage is being practiced and transmitted, as well as the threats to its continuity and approaches to safeguarding it, are both better informed and more sustainable. Main goals of this community-based approach are to: - Raise awareness within communities about the value of their own living heritage, through an engaging and collective approach to documenting it, and - to understand the current state of living traditions; how they are being transmitted, threats to their continuity and the kind of measures that could be developed to better safeguard them. The workshop topics and future pilot project Topics covered will include: ● A general introduction to the Convention and its key concepts ● The importance of community participation and ethical approaches ● Various techniques for documenting living heritage ● How inventorying relates to raising awareness about and safeguarding living heritage, and, ● How to organize information in systematic ways that eventually constitute inventories The workshop itself is the first step in a pilot project for the city of Irbid. It will be led by UNESCO facilitators and the training will involve a combination of lessons, group work sessions, and practical exercises in documentation within Irbid communities. It will then be followed by a two-month pilot project (April- May) whereby 12 participants identified during the training will take on roles as local facilitators, continuing field documentation with communities in Irbid to test the methodologies taught during the training workshop. Location and practical aspects The workshop will be held in Irbid, with more information provided after the selection of participants. The UNESCO Jordan Office, in collaboration with the Petra National Trust, will organize both the training and the pilot project, with the guidance of the UNESCO facilitators, who will also support the local facilitators throughout the pilot project in April and May. Participants will be required to attend the entire workshop to obtain a UNESCO certificate of attendance. Letter of interest: To apply to participate in the workshop, please complete the form (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScb6HipjFWiarIRwmM9767PymK6fJdkI4iXgThtYpSpIxu_YA /viewform?usp=sf_link ), referring to your: ● Interest in community and field-based research and intangible cultural heritage ● Any relevant past or present experience in the field of heritage and more specifically, the safeguarding of living heritage ● Ability to commit to the duration of the training and the pilot project: (attending all workshop sessions and the pilot project fieldwork and contributing to reporting activities and a wrap up session for the project). ● Intention to continue working longer-term in the field of safeguarding living heritage Eligibility criteria ● Residency Irbid city or belonging to a community while residing elsewhere with the capacity to participate ● Availability for the entire duration of the workshop and the pilot project period in April and May ● Strong communication skills applicable to community-based field research ● Sound organizational skills in relation to the organization of fieldnotes and the entry of the information collated into systematic formats for the inventory. ● Participants from different community backgrounds are encouraged to participate Contact: Those wishing to apply to the training program must complete the form and submit via this link (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScb6HipjFWiarIRwmM9767PymK6fJdkI4iXgThtYpSpIxu_YA /viewform?usp=sf_link) by 16 February 2022. For more information, please contact Petra National Trust (PNT) via email: [email protected], or call 07775911170. Note: Participants will be eligible for meals and transportation during the training days.