Main areas of work related to the Convention:
1) Policy
1A. Flemish Inventory: we assist communities with applications for the Inventory, moderate focus groups to make a SWOT analysis, develop safeguarding plans and communication strategies etc., and offer feedback on the application form. This has led to the inscriptions of carillon culture (2014), hunting horn playing on the French horn (2019), fanfare culture (2020) and hunting horn playing on Fürst-Pless and Parforcehorn (2024).
1B. The governmental website www.immaterieelerfgoed.be aims to make ICH visible
without a recognition. Anyone can register their ICH with a description and a photo. On demand, we help communities to write these. More proactively, we encourage GCI to register, annually focusing on a theme such as performing arts in religious practices (2021), craftsmanship (2022), music and stage techniques (2023), dance (2024) and theatre practices (2025).
1C. We assist with applications for bursaries for transmitting craftsmanship, following calls from the Flemish government. Our assistance may include: helping to give shape to the project or to define their practice as ICH, giving feedback on draft proposals and communication, guaranteeing a high success rate for applicants. Recent successful projects include: making of pianos, cardboard book music for mechanical organs and reeds for musette, storytelling about Flemish folk and passing on the skills of a magician.
1D. We monitor GCI’ safeguarding actions to nominate examples for the Flemish Register for Inspiring Examples for Safeguarding Actions and we communicate about the nominated practices in our domain on our channels.
2) Projects
2A. Focus Craftsmanship, 2021-2023: a project that developed a methodology
and toolbox to document, share and activate ICH. The project included 10 cases, one of which
was coordinated by CEMPER. We collaborated with a hurdy-gurdy maker to document his craft in
start-to-finish instruction video's.
2B. The children's song book ‘Schipper mag ik overvaren?’ (published November 2023) in collaboration with Publisher Lannoo, for which we participatively collected 100 children's songs in 33 languages that are sung today, hereby documenting the ICH of the versatile population in Flanders.
2C. The Creative Europe project ‘Dance as ICH: New models of facilitating participatory dance events’, 2022-2025, in which we collaborate with partners across Europe to explore the facilitation of dance as ICH and the relationship between dance communities, heritage institutions and the public.
2D. In 2024, we conducted a research on the sustainability of social dance in Flanders, that is now being used by a focus group working on safeguarding. While this research was not initiated for an application on the Inventory, this could still be one of the safeguarding measures formulated by this group.
2E. We conducted a research in 2024-2025 to assign significance to the living practice of ‘Poesjenellentheater’, a kind of puppet theatre in Antwerp. Through fieldwork, we gained insights into the importance of this practice today and the challenges and opportunities for safeguarding. Other Flemish heritage organizations will use this information in developing projects with this community.
3) Network
CEMPER is part of a large professional network. We collaborate with other thematic heritage organizations in Flanders (Workshop intangible heritage, CAG, PARCUM, ETWIE, Histories, Bokrijk and FARO), local heritage organizations (the so-called 'heritage cells') and supporting organizations for music and performing arts (such as VLAMO, Muziekmozaïek, OPENDOEK, Koor&Stem, Danspunt and Circuscentrum). Through our work, we continuously expand our network among GCI to further stimulate ICH safeguarding.
Objectives
CEMPER is the national service heritage organization for music and performing arts heritage for
the Dutch speaking area of Belgium (Flanders and partly Brussels). We are the point of contact
for anyone who comes across or embodies both tangible and intangible heritage related to music
and performing arts. Our objectives are (1) to raise awareness about music and performing arts
heritage, and (2) to strengthen and activate communities, organizations and individuals to take
care of and safeguard their heritage. Proactively, we advise and support them with the
five functions from the Flemish heritage decree (recognise and collect; preserve and safeguard;
research; present and making accessible; participation). Furthermore, we adopt a bottom-up
approach, as we assist anyone with questions they might have about music and performing arts heritage.
For intangible cultural heritage (ICH) specifically, our objective is that music and performing arts
practices are made visible and safeguarded insofar that this corresponds to the needs of
communities, groups and individuals (CGI) who practice this heritage. We help CGI with policy
instruments concerning ICH, including nominations for the Flemish Inventory for ICH, registering
ICH on the Flemish platform www.immaterieelerfgoed.be, and applications for bursaries for
transmitting craftsmanship. We also help CGI to develop safeguarding plans and to carry out
safeguarding actions. This includes, for examples, actions related to raising awareness,
transmission, documenting or archiving. We also initiate and participate in projects related to music and performing arts heritage.
To do this, we rely on more than twenty years of experiences from Het Firmament and Resonant,
two former organizations, respectively the centres for performing arts and for music heritage, which merged into CEMPER in 2019. We learn from best practices and research from Belgium and abroad and we collaborate with local, national and international stakeholders and partner organizations in the heritage and arts sectors.
Cooperation
As a service providing heritage organization, CEMPER does not hold a collection or houses any
ICH activities. Instead, our work is determined by questions coming from people and organizations who do so, thereby adopting a bottom-up approach at all times. Referring to the organization's activities described in B.4 our cooperation with CGI is as follows:
- 1A and 1C: While we actively make people aware of the existence of the Inventory and the
bursaries, we only assist practitioners with applications at their request. Specifically for Inventory applications, one of our roles is to help the individuals initiating the application that the wider heritage community is aware, involved, and consents of the process. We achieve this through field research, surveys and focus groups.
- 1B: To encourage communities to register their ICH, we go into dialogue with them to inquire what they need to make this possible. Some are willing to write a text and only ask for feedback. Others are not comfortable with writing themselves. In this case, we will interview them, propose a text based on that interview and only submit it after thorough feedback and approval of the community, so that everyone gets a chance at registering.
- 2: The projects we collaborate in are either initiated by a community or practitioner, or by another professional institution. In either case, the decisions we take throughout the projects are determined by the communities. For example, for Focus Craftsmanship we chose the case study of the hurdy-gurdy maker based on a question he had asked us previously, expressing his wish to document his craft in instruction videos. For the Creative Europe project, CEMPER - in contrast to the other partner organizations - did not develop an exhibition as at the time of application, we had insufficient contacts among the relevant communities. However, we take on an advisory role on working with communities and used this opportunity to get to know the folk dance communities in Flanders better through ethnographic fieldwork. Based on the detected needs, we initiated a focus group that works on the safeguarding of social dance in Flanders.
