Home | About "Data Bank on Traditional/Folk Performing Arts in Asia and the Pacific"
The Asian and Pacific region is rich in various forms of intangible cultural heritage. Due to the rapid social changes taking place in many parts of the region, however, a significant part of this rich heritage is on the verge of disappearing. As the heritage is the embodiment of the attainment of cultural tradition as well as a source of creative imagination and inspiration, it is imperative to make maximum efforts to conserve it, so that we can hand it down to future generations.
This view was shared by participants of the 1998 Regional Seminar for Cultural Personnel in Asia and the Pacific, titled "Preservation and Promotion of the Intangible Cultural Heritage," which was organised and hosted by the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) in Tokyo (24 February - 2 March 1998), in cooperation with UNESCO, the Japanese National Commission for UNESCO, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japan. Based on the strong recommendation expressed by the participants to develop a data bank of performing arts, the "Joint Development Programme of the Data Bank on Traditional/Folk Performing Arts" was launched. The Programme was developed and elaborated through the following two Regional Seminars;
The first fruit of the Programme was a 380 page directory entitled "Data Bank on Traditional/Folk Performing Arts in Asia and the Pacific - A Basic Model" published in September 2000. It was produced through joint collaboration of the participating UNESCO Member States in the Region and ACCU with cooperation of the UNESCO National Commissions and with the grant from the Tokyo Club. It contains data collected from 18 countries and was compiled by ACCU with minimum editorial work. Data Bank on Traditional/Folk Performing Arts in Asia and the Pacific is a digital version of the above.
One of the intentions of this Programme is to demonstrate a possible methodology of archiving information on traditional/folk performing arts. So, the Data Bank includes only a sample of the traditional/folk performing arts existing in each country, and is expected to serve as a basic model for future production of a data bank of intangible cultural heritage.
This is a tentative, first trial version in nature, and does not try to be comprehensive or thorough. Accordingly, the number of items of performing arts and organisations included here at the initial stage was intentionally kept within a limit, i.e. around ten performing arts and around five organisations for each country.
Here, one can find information on quite a rich variety of items, many of them little known outside the countries of their origin. We certainly hope that the Data Bank will be a useful tool for researchers in the future and provide an opportunity for others to become familiar with the situation of preservation and promotion of intangible cultural heritage in each country of Asia and the Pacific.
We should like to express our heartfelt gratitude to those who cooperated in this Programme, including the participants of the Seminars, the National Commissions for UNESCO of the participating countries, UNESCO, and the members of the Programme Committee of Experts on the Data Bank.