In 2023, Wiki Loves Living Heritage celebrates living heritage on the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Share your living heritage by participating in the Wiki Loves Living Heritage campaign, and join with numerous heritage practitioners and communities, Wikimedia volunteers, NGOs and other organizations involved in safeguarding around the world.
Inventories of living heritage have been developed in more than 180 countries across the globe. Each year a number of these elements are also inscribed on the UNESCO Lists for ICH. And of course, living heritage is not limited to elements inscribed on the lists or inventories, there is much more to celebrate.
We would like to invite you all, as colleagues implementing ICH policies and inventories in your countries, to participate in the 2023 Wiki Loves Living Heritage Campaign:
- Learn more about the campaign at the website Wiki Loves Living Heritage
- Watch a video to learn more about the campaign (10 mins, subtitles in EN, FR, ES)
- Participate in the launch event at 17th March 1.00 – 2.30 pm UTC (see more and find the link on this page)
- Get in touch with your national Wikimedia affiliates and groups to see what activities you could do together during the year!
- Subscribe to the Wiki Loves Living Heritage newsletter to stay updated about all activities!
Wiki Loves Living Heritage 2023 – Join making the 20th anniversary visible together!
A Global Wikimedia campaign invites heritage communities, Wikimedia volunteers and institutions to document living heritage around the world in images and video.
The activities will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO 2003 Convention and relate to the UNESCO International Decade of Indigenous Languages.
In Europe, it will also be related to the European Heritage Days (EHD) theme year “Living Heritage” under the Council of Europe and the European Commission. Furthermore in 2023, it is the EU Year of Skills.
Global collaboration
Wiki Loves Living Heritage unites local Wikimedia communities and UNESCO ICH Focal Points to document and share living heritage on Wikimedia projects, earning global recognition for their collaborative efforts. It teams up with existing photography contests in the Wikimedian movement, such as Wiki Loves Folklore and Wiki Loves Africa. A range of partners in the global Living Heritage field join and collaborate for making Wiki Loves Living Heritage into an international success story in raising awareness and visibility of ICH. The European Network of Focal Points under 2003 Convention (ENFP) is a strong supporter of the campaign – we hope other ICH networks around the globe will join! Read more about the partnership realizing Wiki loves Living Heritage 2023 below this message
Making Living Heritage visible
The campaign will bring more visibility to UNESCO ICH lists and registers, elements in national inventories and other kinds of ICH. Wiki Loves Living Heritage results in a rich, evolving archive of openly available photographs and videos on Wikimedia Commons. The data and the coordinated participatory activities may result in writing articles to Wikipedia and illustrating them with the newly available images.
Preserving and enriching knowledge
Data about the heritage elements are invited to be added to Wikidata from the national inventories as linked data, which allows linking the media contributions to the data elements. More knowledge and translations can be added by volunteers and stakeholders in hundreds of languages in Wikidata.
Responsible and open
The project makes a strong commitment to ethical sharing while it promotes open access to cultural heritage. The materials are produced in collaboration with the heritage communities or by themselves. A webinar before the contest starts will outline the project’s ethical guidelines. The data is made available as public domain data (CC0) and the participants agree to make their contributions available with Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0.
… This all sounds interesting, but you do have some questions mind? Do have a look at the FAQ where you will find answers to many questions you might have. We are happy to tell you more!
Partnership
The project is initiated jointly between the European network of focal points for the UNESCO 2003 Convention (ENFP) and AvoinGLAM. It is supported so far by European Heritage Days Network, Workshop intangible heritage Flanders & Flemish Commission for UNESCO in Belgium, Quebec Council for Living Heritage, Finnish Heritage Agency, Culture Ireland and Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Contact the coordinator of the initiative
- wikiloveslivingheritage@gmail.com • Susanna Ånäs / Avoin GLAM
Or ask more from
- leena.marsio@museovirasto.fi • Finnish Heritage Agency / ENFP
- jorijn.neyrinck@gmail.com • Workshop Intangible Heritage / ENFP
