Mr. Joseph Spanner of Congo Reserve Plantation in St Eustatius sharing oral histories     related to slavery (as passed down by his ancestors) with students of the Simon Doncker Club © Misha Spanner  

Having completed the first joint training on the implementation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage last September, representatives of the Dutch Caribbean (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao, Saba, Sint Eustatius, and Sint Maarten) are taking the next significant step in the implementation of a coordinated strategy to safeguard their living heritage.

From 22 to 28 February 2015, community practitioners, as well as governmental and non-governmental experts, will gather in Curaçao for a workshop on community-based inventorying of intangible cultural heritage, with the primary aim to develop a framework for the inventory of their heritage. The core of the workshop will focus on community participation in the identification and definition of intangible cultural heritage, data collection, organization and management, laying the foundation not only for a 5-day field inventorying exercise to follow in the six respective islands, but also for future inventorying and safeguarding work.

Organized by the UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean and the Curaçao National Commission for UNESCO, and in close cooperation with national partners across the islands, this workshop is a part of a capacity-building project to reinforce the safeguarding of living heritage in the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname, made possible thanks to the generous contribution from the Government of the Netherlands to the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund.

Author: UNESCO Kingston Office

For more information, please contact:

Andrea Richards, Project Coordinator (a.richards@unesco.org; a.richards@unesco.org)