Sow the Future, Harvest Communities: 20th Anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage

With the motto “Sow the Future, Harvest Communities” (ital. Seminare futuro, raccogliere comunità) the Archive of Ethnography and Social History (ital. Archivio di Etnografia e Storia Sociale) of the Lombardy Region celebrated the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage on November 9, 2023. The morning session featured several speakers who have been and continue to be involved in creating, implementing and transforming the conceptualisation and understanding of (cultural) heritage (see programme). It was closed by Chiara Bortolotto who gave a lecture on the sustainabilisation of heritage; with the idea that “it is not we who preserve heritage but heritage that safeguards us” she pointed out the different ways in which heritage can be integrated into the construction of a shared future. In the afternoon, the experiences of the International Alpine Food Heritage Networks were presented. The networks – one of the results of the AlpFoodway project – are preparing to enlist their practices in the UNESCO Register of Good Safeguarding Practices. Lucija Gartner, a cheese-maker from the Bohinj mountain pasture of Laz, and Špela Ledinek Lozej, a collaborator of the AlpFoodway project and Heriscope represented Slovenia in this transnational undertaking.