Main areas of work related to the Convention:

We must differentiate between the local and international levels in our Safeguarding ICH activities. At the local level, our goal is twofold: on the one hand, to collaborate with Basque intangible heritage experts and artists to showcase Basque traditions and culture in our activities, and to establish dialogues between the different cultures that live in our communities of diverse origins in order to strengthen and make both visible. For example, we are carrying out a project titled "Bilbao / Ethnographic Analysis" that began in 2021 and continues to this day. This program studies and collects traditions and rituals from the old part of Bilbao's urban center, dating back to the Middle Ages, where each street had rituals, usually associated with Christian traditions and saints, of which only images remain, placed on each street. With this, we developed a general MOOC about streets and their customs, identities, dances, festivals, and Bilbao's characters, etc. The 2025 edition of the "Expressions" Festival will take place in December. We collaborate with artists to adapt practices to contemporary contexts while respecting their cultural essence. This is the basis of our "Expressions Festival" and our methodology with artists we call "on the border" of different traditions. This year's program is related to the international networking we'll describe later: The invited countries will be South Africa and Gabon. Traditional dance workshops; Performances and exhibitions in schools, and a roundtable discussion on cultural minorities and the digital environment are the activities for 2025. The Festival will be linked to monthly gatherings where traditional cuisine serves as a connecting link for a day of intangible heritage open to all citizens to raise awareness. At the international level, we coordinate from 2024 a platform called Platform cso2005 (www.cso2005.org) created by nine organizations from Regions I, III, Va, and Vb. This platform was created to promote Convention 2005 and Convention 2003 (https://www.cso2005.org/index.php/convencion-2003/). Within the framework of this platform, we are implementing projects with members from Egypt (business training courses for rural women who develop crafts), South Africa (Xhosa and Zulu dance, promoting a dance company that preserves these traditions), and Niger (traditional dance festival to give visibility to almost disappeared dances from that country) to ensure their transmission to future generations. With the aim of identifying practices and needs, regional meetings have been held in Regions III, Va, and Vb since June 2024. To date, five meetings per region have been coordinated by our organization, with the participation of approximately 40 organizations and practitioners of intangible cultural traditions. All coordination has been done through Facebook and through the network of contacts of each of the platform's regional leaders. These meetings have helped us define strategies through 2027. Advisory Services Expertise • Technical Assistance: Our advisory body for the identification and preparation of projects related to intangible heritage. • We are experts in intervention methodologies, preservation, and promotion of intangible heritage in urban environments where identity realities and specific displays reside. • We maintain partnerships with ICH focal points in 9+ countries, facilitating cross-border knowledge exchange and emergency response for crises affecting living heritage. • A multidisciplinary team of anthropologist, legal advisor, and artists with 20+ years of field experience.