The LIVIND Pilot Projects  developed existing and tested new practices to safeguard and support more sustainable living heritage

Bornholms Centre for Medieval Times heads to develop their pottery workshops into a new era and widen their scope of participants. They want to develop and test concepts for workshops so that they better serve local children and teenagers.

”We want to lift our education on historical pottery and clay, so that it will benefit a larger group of local children and teenagers in the future, with special attention to the socially exposed groups. The main goal is to have our pottery activities work as a hub for medieval handcrafts, small-scale production of utensils from natural resources, story-telling, and local community building.”

The Festival “Ööbikuööd” (The Nights of the Nightingale) has been created to focus attention on storytelling as a timeless and significant cultural phenomenon, as well as to enable experiencing our living heritage in a wide variety of forms. The main goal of the storytelling festival is to unite people and communities at the grassroots level supporting the sense of communities and safeguarding oral expressions as an important factor of social sustainability.

”Storytelling unites people. A commonly perceived experience of storytelling can help bring people closer to each other and foster mutual support and understanding in crises, and make sense of the world. Such experience may even be therapeutic and have a positive effect on the spiritual level.”

The initiative “Let’s Get Mumming!” (”Hakkame Santima!”) was created in 2018 with the aim to raise awareness about Estonian mumming traditions, to inspire more people to dress up as characters, prepare programmes, and go from door to door on St Martin’s and St Catherine’s Day. The pilot project helps supporting the sustainability of this old tradition through different activities including a specific outdoor campaign.

”Mummers’ costumes and accessories are usually made of what is found at home. Reusing, recycling and preferring second-hand solutions is good for the environment and magnifies the message of responsible consumption. This is also the reason, why we co-operate with Estonia’s biggest re-use organization as our partner – to raise as much awareness as possible.”

The main threat for the preservation of dugout boat culture is the interruption of the continuity of transmitting dugout boatbuilding skills during the next decades due to a small “pipeline” of future masters and the demographic profile of current masters. This pilot project aims at increasing the number of young people participating the dug-out boat workshops with special attention on gender balance, too.

Today, there is no need for peat as a source of heating and fuel for cooking, but by keeping the old skills and traditions alive the Útoyggjafelagið is testing how those can become a new kind of resource. The expected result of the project is a local community that is better informed and able to […]

This pilot tests a new festival about raw wool on the Faroe Islands. At this phase a one-day event, it is aimed at families. Morning and afternoon workshops allow children to touch, test and make small samples out of raw wool. Children learn about raw wool in the natural surroundings on the Faroes, e.g. that […]

The implementers of the pilot project, the Finnish Local Heritage Federation and the Association of Cultural Heritage Education in Finland, are both experienced in promoting cultural heritage and learning in different ways. The pilot project “Let it spin!” started from testing the “Spinner of Living Heritage”, a new tool created for discussing living heritage especially […]

Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) is a vast northern area known for the glaciers that cover most of the area and for being one of the home areas for the Inuit indigenous people. An important part of Inuit living cultural heritage are the diverse craft practices that connect with the ways of life deeply connected to the […]

Developing a new educational programme ‘Land’ Experiencing the climate crisis at local level influenced planning the pilot project of the LungA art school in coastal East Iceland. The community in Seyðisfjörður has come to witness how the once-thriving fishing industry for herring has ceased due to the warming waters in the fjord and the infamous […]

Having a first name and a family is such an everyday thing that it can easily slip attention along with the stories that names can hold. The pilot project ”Stories of Names and Family Names”, managed by The Latvian Association of Storytellers, headed to collect stories of names. In this way, the pilot project aimed […]

traditions of fermented foods and the concept ‘Travelling Kitchen’ Fermented foods have a long tradition in Latvia and knowledge and skills about preparing food through fermentation have been transferred rather well from generation to generation until nowadays. However, fermentation is sometimes seen as a difficult process to master and the dishes not fitting the modern […]

The Dzūkija region in southern Lithuania, the area of the pilot project, is well-known as a place of strong traditional communities safeguarding various elements of living cultural heritage, including a particular approach and appreciation of mushroom picking. Even if the mushroom picking tradition is practiced throughout all regions of Lithuania, it is mostly associated with […]

Røros municipality is located in mid-Norway, Trøndelag county, and is known as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being one of the oldest towns of wooden buildings in Europe. Røros, with a little over 5000 inhabitants, is rich in living cultural heritage, including dance. With the pilot project the Norwegian centre for traditional music and […]

The border between Poland and Lithuania is not much longer than hundred kilometres, but it allows the forested area of northern Poland, the Augustow forests, to continue to the Lithuanian side and the Dzūkija national park and Dainava Forest. In both areas, the tradition of sustaining nesting logs for wild bees that create their hives […]

This pilot project celebrated crocheted lace specific to Koniaków village in Silesia, Southern Poland. This type of lace is well acknowledged, insrcibed on Poland’s national list of intangible cultural heritage, and developed into new forms of use. It is especially cherished by the Koniaków Lace Foundation, the organiser of the pilot project. While several innovative […]

Roma history is an integral part of the story of Europe, also in Sweden. Due to the long history of discrimination and institutionalised racism, very little of this history is preserved in Sweden’s museums today. This applies also to the craft traditions distinctive to the Roma culture, especially goldsmiths and silversmiths’ work. Nowadays, Roma crafts […]

The Swedish word “fäbod” refers to a traditional seasonal dwelling or small farmstead typically located in remote rural areas, such as forests or mountainous regions. Historically, these farmsteads were used by farmers during the summer months when they would move their livestock to remote pastures for grazing. This practice is also known as transhumance, the […]

Åland Islands are located between southern parts of Finland and Sweden and embraced by the Baltic Sea. In addition to the main island, there are several smaller islands that create the Åland Archipelago with its uniquely beautiful flora and fauna, including numerous species of sea birds. One of these species is the common merganser (Mergus […]

Sámi people are the North European indigenous people whose home area stretches from the middle parts of Norway and Sweden to northern Finland and Kola Peninsula in north-western Russia. Already for some decades, the Sámi communities have actively worked in their countries to raise awareness about their cultures and languages calling for their cultural and […]

The Nordic and Baltic Network on Intangible Cultural Heritage (NB-ICH Network) was founded in 2019. It supports the interaction and collaboration between the Nordic and Baltic NGOs accredited to the 2003 Convention and other NGOs and communities working with the safeguarding of the ICH, but it also welcomes researchers, representatives of the State Parties of […]