ICHCAP

With the aim of establishing mechanisms to improve information sharing in relation to ICH safeguarding, ICHCAP intends to undertake activities to enhance access to and the availability of information and strengthen information management capacity, targeting intangible cultural heritage (ICH) stakeholders, within the framework of ICHCAP’s projects. As part of these efforts, ICHCAP develops model web template as an information management and service tool in the framework of the 2016 project, Supporting ICH Website Creation and Operation Using Community-Based Web Templates.

At the end of 2016, ICHCAP and information officers began to discuss using information/ICT for ICH safeguarding activities (Information Officers Meeting for Safeguarding ICH in the Asia-Pacific Region: Using Information/ICT). Island Ark Project Foundation, Inc. (IAP), one of the participating organizations and ICHCAP began planning an ICT-based information project to share information about indigenous cultures’ heritage. Through the project, the partnership developed website templates to be distributed to government and education institutes so that they can curate content about their ICH and distribute it online to a wider audience.

On 21 and 22 November, delegates from ICHCAP and IAP will hold the Workshop on Using Website Templates to Safeguard Intangible Cultural Heritage in Koror, Palau, to introduce the web templates to heritage-related organizations and to teach them how to make the best use of the templates. In addition to the workshop facilitators, in attendance will be members of Sonsorol State, Belau National Museum, Palau Community College, Bai Study Group, Palau Research Institute and other esteemed institutes.

The workshop’s goal is to train the participants, so they are able to upload ICH digital assets—text, image, video, and audio files—and apply metadata descriptions to the uploaded content. Also included will be information about developing strategies for managing online content. By the end of the workshop, the participants should be fully equipped to manage their own websites independently.

We are looking forward to a successful workshop, and we hope to build on what we learn so that we can improve the templates and better provide quality output for the participants.