Yazd Hosted the Second Round of Iran’s Capacity-Building Workshop

Yazd Hosted the Second Round of Iran’s Capacity-Building Workshop

Tehran ICH Centre co-organized the second phase of the Community-Based Inventorying (CBI) workshop for Iran with UNESCO Tehran Cluster Office (UTCO), ministry of Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts (MCTH), and MCTH Yazd provincial office in 6 days from 6 to 11 October 2019, in Yazd, Iran.
The Participants were mostly local anthropologists who active in the field of intangible cultural heritage from 31 provinces of Iran. Mr. Rahul Goswami from India was the facilitator of the workshop.
At the opening session attended by Mr. Reza Zarezadeh, the Governor of the town of Mehriz, Mr. Fatemi, the General Director of MCTH Yazd provincial office, Mr. Reza Sojoudi, Acting Director of the Tehran ICH Centre, Ms. Mahta Mohegh, UTCO Cultural Program Specialist who also delivered speeches.
The workshop aimed to discuss issues on the following objectives: to outline CBI under the Convention and its uses, recap of earlier CBI training and its progress in Iran, understanding documentation and inventorying, overview of documentation for ICH, revisiting Iran’s 13 ICH elements listed ICH on the relevant Convention lists, and how they were inventoried. Furthermore, the activities mentioned below have also been carried out during the workshop: a re-examination of inventorying concepts, overview of the typical form and framing a ‘Documentation Integrative’ (DI) structure, participants’ presentations on their experiences with documentation, feeding documentation experience into the DI structure, limitations and opportunities of documentation methods, the ICH (and allied forms) experience in Afghanistan with the cooperation of UNESCO and several Afghan state organizations, unpacking information types used in a form and how to prepare for them, mock interviews for form filling, assessing methods for different kinds of ICH and differing communities, introduction to ICH as a part of knowledge systems – the connections to environment, organization, resources, crafts, case presentation of inventorying, economics and disaster response, why and how inventorying for ICH is a planning aide, examining the dimensions of inventorying and documentation with a focus on development, identifying knowledge systems in state/private sectors of Iran and their links with ICH safeguarding, refining the DI structure as a workshop outcome.
The workshop witnessed the vast involvement of all participants in session’s discussions and group work and resulted in more acquaintances of participants with the objectives of the 2003 convention, and inventorying intangible cultural heritage based on their experiences with local communities. This event inspired the participated specialists to consider more local community involvements and the importance of their role in safeguarding ICH at the national level during the process of inventorying.
Based on the evaluation form gathered from the participants in the course of this workshop, the materials and contents of the first and second phases of the workshop were satisfactorily evaluated. The workshop mentioned above provided an active partnership among specialists which is an appropriate framework for future cooperation among communities, NGO’s, experts, and government.