A national workshop on Community-based Inventorying of Intangible Cultural Heritage will be held in Orange Walk district in Belize from 1 to 9 October 2013. This is organized by The National Institute of Culture and History in collaboration with the Belize National Commission for UNESCO and the UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean.

The 8-day workshop will focus on i) community involvement in identifying and inventorying in accordance with/as advocated by UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage Convention, ii) information gathering with communities, iii) organizing, accessing and updating information in inventories and iv) a hands-on experience in preparing field work. The workshop will be facilitated by UNESCO trained facilitators, Harriet Deacon and Kris Rampersad.

Various stakeholders such as government officials, non-governmental organizations and community practitioners will come together to partake in the workshop on the implementation of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The official opening ceremony will take place on Tuesday, 1 October 2013 in the presence of invited guests including government officials, diplomatic corps, Heads of UN Agencies and the media.

Funded by the Government of Japan, the workshop is part of a sub-regional project being implemented in Belize, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago within the context of UNESCO’s Global Strategy on capacity building on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.