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Category: Intangible Cultural Heritage

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Folklife at the International Level: the Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part III

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

This series of blog posts has turned to looking more closely at the roots of the ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (ICH) concept, laying a foundation for examining the global policy – and thereby framework – from which it draws its strength: the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the United Nations …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Folklife at the International Level: the Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part II, with Valdimar Tr. Hafstein

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

In the last post, the Folklife at the International Level series took a turn into the world of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH), a category of heritage on the global stage that developed decades ago, thanks to the joint efforts of WIPO and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). As noted, since the …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Folklife at the International Level: The Roots of Intangible Cultural Heritage Part I

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

Exploring how legal measures, particularly intellectual property (IP) protections, can be used to safeguard living cultural traditions, practices, and expressions has been a longstanding aim of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as discussed so far in this series. Yet, there exists another international organization that has for several decades taken on similar questions of …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Folklife at the International Level: Recent Developments in Protecting Traditional Cultural Expressions

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

  Yet another World Intellectual Property Day has arrived, and what better way to celebrate than to catch up with related developments on the folklife front? So far, this series has explored the international efforts of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in protecting traditional cultural expressions (TCEs) as intellectual property (IP) via IP protections. …