The Interreg Nord-funded project ICH North – passing on our musical heritage has during 2021 and 2022 been dealing with networking, collaborating and planning actions to promote the transmission of intangible cultural heritage in northern Finland, Sweden and Norway as well as Sápmi. During the project, a three-year project was planned and an application submitted to Interreg Aurora.
The project partners included Centria University of Applied Sciences and the Finnish Folk Music Institute in Finland and the Arctic University of Norway UiT in Norway. The associated partners Framnäs folkhögskola and Norrbottens Spelmandsförbund were also part of the Project Working Group, together with Sámi Musihhkaakademiija in Utsjoki.
The Finnish Folk Music Institute is an accredited NGO that together with other accredited NGO’s worldwide provide advisory functions to the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Through this, ICH North have had a connection to the UNESCO framework for intangible cultural heritage and a bottom-up approach emphasizing the role of musical heritage communities.
The main achievements of ICH North have been:
- Building networks between educational institutions, NGO’s, music archives and music communities in northern Finland, Sweden, Norway as well as Sápmi
- Mapping existing and missing materials
- Producing a pilot version of a digital map of musical communities of the North, presenting their ways of practicing and transmitting their musical heritage
- Planning a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) and several other work packages included in a project funding application to the first call of Interreg Aurora, with an enlarged project consortium
You can have a closer look at the pilot version of the digital map here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/166cd85a76f54bb68eee3e1b98865cf5
The Final Seminar of ICH North was recorded and you can find it here, with an interesting Key Note Speech from Leena Marsio at the Finnish Heritage Agency as well as the results and outputs of the project: