Ms Panyiota Andrianopoulou, facilitator for the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage
R.C.: What are the key messages of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage that have remained fully relevant to this day?
P.A.:
- Time for the communities to express themselves, to feel proud and to take initiatives for their own living heritage!
- A lullaby deserves as much as a majestic architectural monument!
- Intangible Cultural Heritage is a living, often shared among different culturally people, deeply enrooted to the collective identity, living heritage, preaching for polyphone, respect for the otherness, peace between people and harmony with nature!
- Let’s keep networking!
R.C.: Would you identify such trends in the safeguarding of the intangible cultural heritage as relate to the use of formal and non-formal education and are the result of educational policies and practices?
P.A.: Safeguarding is one of the pathbreaking concepts initiated by the 2003 Convention and completely shifted common ideas and official policies towards the preservation of living and constantly transforming everyday cultural phenomena. It calls for concrete strategies to reassure the ongoing enactment and transmission of traditional knowledge to young generations. Education, regardlessly formal or informal, is meant to be at the forefront of safeguarding practices that raise-awareness of the living heritage as a community enrooted identity mark, as a vehicle for intercultural dialogue, as a component of social cohesion and sustainability.
R.C.: Which are the highlights in marking the 20th Anniversary of the signing of the 2003 Convention and how do they relate to the dynamic changes in the political, cultural, social and economic contexts of the present day?
P.A.: Twenty years after the adoption of the 2003 Convention, it is not by chance that it reveals to be one of the most popular and democratic international legal instruments: realizing that it is only by bottom-up policies solutions can be given to major questions such as social peace, environmental crisis, cultural, gender and geographical equity, the 2003 Convention opens the floor to the bearers of cultural expressions to express themselves and to tailor safeguarding and sustainable measures according to their own needs and ways of life.
R.C.: In what direction do you anticipate the future development of Regional Category 2 Centres in terms of the safeguarding, conservation and evolution of the living heritages?
P.A.: The recent COVID-19 experience demonstrated more than anything else the importance of networking to exchange good practices and to overcome difficulties. The Regional Category 2 Sofia Centre had proved its will to become a pole of regional cooperation (its support in the European countries periodic reporting training was of major effectiveness). The launching of regional campaigns for the ICH safeguarding through common research projects, museum and exhibition activities, educational packages and documentation, are some examples of potential fruitful plans to work forward. And by all means insist on the capacity building strategy ideas and action that fulfil the requirements of aligning national policies to the international evolutions.
R.C.: How your personal experience in communicating with intangible cultural heritage has affected your professional growth?
P.A.: Since 2011, and even more intensively since the establishment of the Regional Category 2 Sofia Center, my academic and professional horizons had significantly broadened. This is due not only to the constant engagement with the 2003 Convention and its mechanism, but mostly to the cooperation with colleagues from the region, the exchange of common problematics and ideas, the setting up of leeway to overcome difficulties. Furthermore, I used to adapt myself easily in different socio-cultural contexts and to practice the anthropological theories of understanding the other through self-reflection. The Sofia Center assisted me perfectly in all the workshops organized and gave me the possibility to experience the living heritage in vivo. And I preciously acknowledge and appreciate it![:]