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 the 2003 Convention, practitioners, community workers etc. A special aim of the network is to share good practices about community involvement.
The NB-ICH Network’s pilot project built on the need to increase knowledge and understanding about living heritage and sustainable development in the Nordic and Baltic countries with emphasis on community approach. Organised by the Finnish Folk Music Institute, the pilot project headed to raise awareness through a series of professionally produced podcasts. The target group of the podcasts are different NGOs, practitioners of living heritage, parties providing living heritage based services or products, municipalities with ICH elements in their area, and other interested parties.
”We hope to reach many listeners from different countries working with ICH elements. The language will be English, so the podcasts are easily accessible for a larger audience as well and the podcasts can encourage people to consider their own relationship to cultural heritage. We hope this Nordic and Baltic ICH Network project will open a new way to develop deeper co-operation between the participants and contribute to awareness raising of Nordic and Baltic ICH safeguarding.”
The project team, consisting of journalist Amanda Kauranne and staff members of the Finnish Folk Music Institute, produced, together with stakeholder communities and NGOs belonging to the Nordic-Baltic ICH Network, three podcast episodes of 65–75 minutes on intangible cultural heritage and its relationship with sustainable development. The interviewees were ICH practitioners, NGO representatives and experts from Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Kenya, Germany, Colombia and Hungary. These episodes focused on:
In addition, three further podcasts about practices of transmission, specific communities and domains of living heritage were produced by the Erasmus+ project ‘Sheritage’. The six episodes produced in these two projects formed jointly the podcast series ”Living the heritage”, with its own visual image and promotion materials. The series is freely available at Bandcamp and at the Finnish Folk Music Institute webpage with descriptions of the contents of the episodes in Finnish and in English.
The podcast series was planned well in advance with attention to different viewpoints to sustainability and living heritage safeguarding. The ten interviewees represented a variety of living heritage practices, NGOs, and expertise from different countries in three continents: Estonia, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Kenya, Germany, Colombia, and Hungary.
The podcast series was created with a journalist specialised in folk music and culture in the lead. In addition to planning and implementing the visits for interviews and recording them, the process included editing and mastering the recorded material with creating additional audio material. For the publishing of the podcasts and to spread the information about the series there was also designed a visual appearance to the series with illustrations for webpages and social media and promotional postcards, including QR-codes that link to the podcasts, easy to hand out at different events. When the podcast series was published, it was promoted with a media release and with a social media campaign for each episode and for whole series.
The result of the project are the three podcast episodes that discuss sustainable development and living cultural heritage with attention to different viewpoints. The podcast series meets the need to diversify understanding about sustainability and spreads knowledge and raises awareness about the role and significance of living heritage and community-based approach to strengthen sustainable development.
The audio format that is available for free makes it easy to approach and achievable for different audiences. The length of each episode gives the opportunity to delve deeper into the various topics with several interviewees’ bringing viewpoints that connect with different elements of living heritage. The themes include, for example, resilience of the practitioner communities, global work towards peace and understanding between different ethnic, national and other groups, and developing tourism in a sustainable way.
The implementation of the podcasts pilot project was rather uncomplicated. Main challenge was in finding key themes for the podcast episodes. Experimenting in practice how to plan, manuscript, produce and edit podcasts was a beneficial learning experience for all of the pilot project team. Each of the podcast episodes exemplify the role of living heritage as a resource for achieving more sustainable communities and environments. The project also strengthened contacts within the Nordic-Baltic ICH Network and outside it, by bringing new parties into co-operation, which can lead to future joint activities. Through the themes handled in the podcast and their impact on the communities involved the project contributes especially to Sustainable Development Goals 4 and 11 and indirectly to 1, 5, 8, 10, 12, 16 and 17.
Pilot Project Manager: Nordic and Baltic ICH Network / Finnish Folk Music Institute
