Friday, July 25, 2008

ICH meets Survey Monkey!

The Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) is overseeing the implementation of a strategy to safeguard the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) or "Living Heritage" of the province.

As part of this strategy, HFNL is conducting an online survey through the web-based Survey Monkey to determine the types of assistance community organizations require in safeguarding their ICH. The survey will take approximately 10 minutes and all results will be confidential. A summary of final results will be posted on the HFNL website.

To conduct the survey online, visit:

http://www.heritagefoundation.ca

Follow the link to “ICH Survey”

For more information on the survey, telephone Barbara Gravinese at 709-737-3582.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Veterans History Project

This morning, Jillian Gould (Memorial University Folklore Dept's public sector folklorist) and I had an informative telephone chat with Dr. Timothy Lloyd, Executive Director of the American Folklore Society. We had questions for Tim about the training available for people interested in collecting stories, oral history, and personal experience narratives as part of the Veterans History Project in the United States.

The Veterans History Project relies on volunteers to collect and preserve stories of wartime service. The United States Congress created the Veterans History Project in 2000, with a primary focus on collecting first-hand accounts of U.S. Veterans from World War I up to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

For me, one of the interesting programs they deliver is a short, half-day introductory course on interviewing techniques for community groups, seniors' homes, high- and middle-schools who are planning on doing recording projects with veterans in their own communities.

The Veterans History Project also makes good use of online resources, including a Veterans History Project Field Kit which can be downloaded from the Library of Congress website. The kit includes items like data and release forms, and audio, video and recording logs.

The website also offers good introductory level information for groups (and individuals) on preparing for and conducting interviews.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

ICH Needs Assessment Survey

(photo: Joshia Snow and workers with salt fish, Fogo, Fogo Island, NL, no date)


In the next step of the province’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Provincial Initiative, the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) is in the process of conducting a needs assessment survey to uncover what communities need and how we can help to identify, document, celebrate, and transmit our “living heritage.”

Examples of living heritage include skills like hand-building boats, homes, and furniture. HFNL is working to provide opportunities to celebrate people and their skills. Some skills and traditions were once matters of survival, like knitting woollens and preserving food over the winter. People in their homes and the homes of neighbours hooked mats, made fishing nets, told stories, sang and danced in our kitchens. These skills, traditions and crafts were not learned in schools, but learned over time in apprenticeship to senior craftspeople, or were passed down through the oral tradition. Today we look for ways to recognize and celebrate these traditions and skills.

“All these things, and more, are pieces of our Intangible Cultural Heritage,” says Dale Jarvis, ICH development officer for the province. “The survey is part of our ongoing work to see what communities need in order to safeguard this sometimes fragile material.”

The ICH survey will be asking questions about how communities share and celebrate Intangible Cultural Heritage. Barbara Gravinese, a Memorial University, Department of Folklore Graduate Student, will be conducting this phone survey. Gravinese is writing her doctoral thesis on pottery, a contemporary tradition in Newfoundland and Labrador.

“We would also like to know if there are traditions that people value and think are at risk of being forgotten or lost, as the bearers of these traditions - the fiddle maker, the singer, the cook - age and die,” says Gravinese.

“Many people are excited about becoming active members of this initiative on a grassroots level,” she explains. “We would like to know who might be interested in training, on lots of different levels, to do fieldwork recording, filming, and/or interviewing tradition bearers to document their lives and skills.”

Gravinese will be conducting the survey with municipalities, local heritage groups and organizations over the next two months. When completed, the survey results will be posted on the HFNL website at http://www.heritagefoundation.ca/ich.aspx.

For more information on the provincial ICH survey, email bgravinese@mun.ca, or call (709) 737-3582 until the 30th of September, 2008.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Intangible Cultural Heritage Strategy

In its cultural strategy, Creative Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador identified the importance of safeguarding Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) or “living heritage.”

“Our intangible cultural heritage or, alternatively, our “living heritage”, . . encompasses a host of traditions, practices and customs that permeate and help constitute the very marrow of our society. Intangible cultural heritage embraces, among other things, our stories, holidays, community gatherings, culinary arts, rituals, songs and languages. These are passed from one generation to another but do not remain static; they are modified and recreated by each new generation.”

The provincial cultural strategy identified the need to develop an action plan for safeguarding ICH. To develop such a plan, the Department of Tourism, Culture, and Recreation (TCR) appointed an ICH Working Group made up of representatives from the Museum Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Archives Association of Newfoundland and Labrador, Parks Canada, the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, Memorial University, Torngasok, and the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, The Rooms Provincial Museum. Drawing extensively on discussions during the AHI Intangible Cultural Heritage Forum, held in June 2006, the group developed a strategy.

The strategy has now been formally adopted by the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador as the document that will guide their ongoing works to conserve ICH in the province.

See the strategy here.

If you have any comments or suggestions on the strategy please email ich@heritagefoundation.ca or call 709-739-1892 ext 2