UNESCO has partnered with the School for African Heritage (EPA) to help Member States by providing them with knowledge about the concepts, mechanisms and measures offered by the Convention. To make the initiative real, a workshop for the training of trainers on community-based inventorying of intangible cultural heritage will take place from 16 to 23 September 2013 in the EPA in Porto Novo, Benin thanks to funding from the Intangible Cultural Heritage Fund. During this training, participants will have the opportunity to become familiar with the materials elaborated by the Secretariat of the Convention.

The workshop will be facilitated by two expert facilitators, Claudine-Augée Angoué (Gabon) and Sidi Traoré (Burkina Faso) in partnership with EPA director, Baba Keita. It will focus on four principal topics: (1) community-based inventorying in the framework of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, (2) a framework of community-based inventorying, ethics and responsibilities, (3) methods and technics to produce information and (4) community-based inventorying projects.

A field exercise is also planned to allow the 30 participants that include officials from the EPA, the International Traditions and Languages Research Centre (CERDETOLA) and experts form Burkina Faso and Senegal to apply community-based techniques in the field. The workshop will benefit from EPA’s rich experience in the field of training for safeguarding of cultural heritage. The workshop will be coordinated by the EPA who will also organize the field work, building on the solid contacts it has with the communities of the Porto Novo region (the provisory program is being prepared).