International Journal of Intangible Heritage

The International Journal of Intangible Heritage is a refereed academic and professional journal for the cultural and heritage sectors. First published in May 2006, the Journal embraces theory and practice in relation to the study, preservation, interpretation and promotion of intangible heritage. In recent years, academics,researchers and professionals in many different parts of the cultural and heritage sectors have increasingly been collecting, systematizing, documenting and communicating intangible heritage and in particular supporting both its traditional and contemporary expressions. The Journal welcomes submissions of contributions covering all areas and all possible discourses of intangible heritage studies and practice.

The need for such an international publication was one of the significant outcomes of the 2004 Triennial General Conference of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) held in Seoul, Republic of Korea, on the theme “Museums and Intangible Heritage”. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Republic of Korea agreed to provided support for this Journal through the National Folk Museum of Korea.

The printed editions are supplemented by an electronic edition in PDF format at http://www.ijih.org.

Put your foot down on digital transcription!

I had a question recently about transcribing digital recordings. The question was about the difficulty in using a digital recording to make a transcription of the interview.

Have no fear! It is possible to use a foot pedal on your computer, to advance and rewind a digital wav or mp3 file. There are several on the market. Just do a Google search for "USB transcription foot pedal" and you'll get a lot of options. I have yet to try this out, but I'm itching to do so, and when I do, I'll update the blog and let people know how it works out.

You have to buy a foot pedal, but you can get the basic transcription software for free. Express Scribe Transcription Playback Software is one example, which is a totally free download designed to assist the transcription of audio recordings. It is installed on the typist's computer and can be controlled using a transcription foot pedal or using the keyboard. This computer transcriber application also offers valuable features for typists including variable speed playback, multi-channel control, file management and more.

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.

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.

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.

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

Labrador Rug Hooking - An Interview with Alice Moores

On Thursday, June 19th, I gave an introductory workshop on Intangible Cultural Heritage at the Community Centre in L'Anse au Loup, Labrador. The workshop was organized in part by Smart Labrador, and was the first in what I hope will be a series of introductory ICH workshops for the province.

As part of the workshop, I conducted a demonstration interview with local artisan Alice Moores, a rug hooker from Red Bay, Labrador. The goal of the interview was to give people an idea of how to set up and conduct an interview, but also to give something of an insight into intangible cultural heritage from the viewpoint of a practitioner.

Traditional rug hooking is a craft where rugs or mats are made by pulling loops of yarn or fabric through a stiff woven base such as burlap, called "brin" in Newfoundland and Labrador.

You can download the entire interview as an MP3, or visit archive.org to listen to a streaming audio version.

Photos were taken of the interview process as well.

Other Resources:

• Rug Hooking Guild of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Silk-Stocking Mats: The Hooked Mats of the Grenfell Mission of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Grenfell Hooked Mats
• Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador
• Traditional Rug Hooking entry on wikipedia

ICH Workshop: What is Intangible Cultural Heritage?

Thursday, June 19th, 2008
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Community Centre, L’Anse au Loup, Labrador
FREE Workshop

Intangible Cultural Heritage, what we think of in Newfoundland and Labrador as our Living Traditions, is an important new development in the heritage world. We have long thought of heritage as comprised mainly of physical, things – our buildings, our furniture, our clothing – that have been handed down to us, and that we can preserve in our homes, museums and historic sites. However, many communities and peoples around the world recognize that this is only a part of what makes up their heritage, and that intangible ideas, customs and knowledge are equally important in terms of who we are.

Join Dale Jarvis, storyteller and Intangible Cultural Heritage Development Officer from the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador, for a half day workshop at the community centre in L'Anse au Loup, Labrador, to learn what exactly Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) is all about!

About Dale Jarvis, Workshop Leader

Dale Gilbert Jarvis is a folklorist, researcher, and author, who has been working for the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) since 1996, and has recently taken on the role of Intangible Cultural Heritage Development Officer. Dale has a BSc (Hons) in Anthropology/Archaeology from Trent University (Peterborough) and an MA in Folklore from Memorial University. Jarvis is the author of two popular books on Newfoundland and Labrador folklore and ghost stories, and a third book of world ghost stories for young adult readers.

• Download the poster here
• Town of L'Anse au Loup website
• L'Anse au Loup webcam

Taking time to listen

Travelling storyteller hopes to spread the power of the spoken word

CORNER BROOK
CORY HURLEY
Transcontinental Media

Listening to internationally known storyteller, Dan Yashinsky, it's not difficult to tell his audience in western Newfoundland was captive - in both senses of the word.

Whether it is the students who he admitted were "captives" to his speaking engagements at the various schools along his tour or seniors whose attention he grabbed of their own accord, he said people appeared sincerely interested in his folk tales and stories so far this week.

"I really want them to feel that the spoken word is important and that you can't double-click on wisdom, you have to learn it by listening," Yashinsky told The Western Star Tuesday. "Here, in Newfoundland, you have a strong oral culture, but in many parts of the world it's eroded. An old woman told me something (Monday) night that was very moving. She said she used to think she grew up poor, but she looks back now and realizes they were rich because they had time - time to listen, time to tell each other stories, time to talk.

"Nowadays, she said, the kids have a lot of material possessions, but they are very poor when it comes to culture and stories. I have to agree with that. The irony is, nowadays, we can communicate in so many different ways, but we have very little to say to each other."

The Toronto-based storyteller and author hopes people realize the power of the spoken word, yet also recognize the enjoyment it can bring.

"One of the great things about the tour is I am talking to a lot of high school kids," Yashinsky said. "I really have enjoyed that because, a lot of times, they tend to think of storytelling as something for little kids. Then, when they hear the kind of stories I try to tell, they realize they are for adults. In fact, I've told a couple (of stories) that are slightly risqué, tell you the truth."

Of course, he wasn't just interested in having people listen. Yashinsky wanted to expand his knowledge of the world's cultures and traditions by hearing local stories, too.

"Everywhere I went I felt I was part of the community, that they were very accepting and very appreciative," Yashinsky said. "Many of them would come up afterwards to share riddles and stories with me, too.

"Some people collect coins, some collect stamps, some people collect ring tones. Whatever you collect, I collect words - stories, sayings and expressions. I think the nature of a storyteller is to be a listener as much as a teller," he said. "Everywhere I have gone, I've been listening and hearing stories ... certainly, it's a culture that prizes stories here."He has also learned a bit while testing the local trout-fishing waters, he said. Today, Yashinsky will be in Lourdes and Cape St. George.

Reprinted from www.thetelegram.com 11/06/08