Events and meetings on intangible cultural heritage (co-)organized by UNESCO

Chengdu International Conference on Intangible Cultural Heritage in Celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of UNESCO’s Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage

Chengdu, China, 14 to 16 June 2013

Practical information
The Conference will be held at the Shangri-La Hotel in Chengdu. It will take place in conjunction with the Fourth International Festival of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Chengdu. Languages of the Conference will be English, French and Chinese.

Ten years have passed since the adoption of the 2003 Convention, including seven years of actual implementation at the international level. This high-level conference will look back on that decade in order to reflect on the Convention’s function, role and value while also looking forward to its future. The aim is to reflect profoundly on the life of the 2003 Convention so far, providing a strategic opportunity to discuss the intentions of its framers, to identify its achievements thus far and to define priorities for the future.

Scientific and legal experts and States Parties officials who took part actively in the preparation of the 2003 Convention will participate in a series of plenary round-table panels seeking to look backward and forward at the same time, focussing particularly on the challenges facing the Convention today:

• Achievements of the Convention: changing the discourse of ICH and implanting new concepts
• Inventorying and listing
• Parallel universes: intellectual property, world heritage and cultural goods and services
• Safeguarding experiences in the States Parties
• Open questions and future directions