The 9th session of the CRIHAP Governing Board kicks off in Beijing

The Governing Board highly appraised the work of CRIHAP and said it believed that CRIHAP could actively carry out intangible cultural heritage capacity-building training activities in accordance with the spirit of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. The intangible cultural heritage safeguarding work provides intellectual support and technical assistance, which greatly promotes the development of intangible cultural heritage safeguarding work at the national and regional levels, and assists and advances UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage capacity-building strategy in global implementation.

Zhang Aiping, Chairman of the CRIHAP Advisory Committee, hosted the seventh meeting of the Advisory Committee on Jan 13, 2020. The advisory committees made recommendations on the development of CRIHAP’s future business work and the center's long-term work goals.

As one of the seven UNESCO's Category-2 centers in the field of intangible cultural heritage, CRIHAP, since its establishment, has been committed to providing the 48 member states in the Asia-Pacific region with the capacity-building training services on intangible cultural heritage under the framework of the Convention. Up to December 2019, CRIHAP has held 46 intangible cultural heritage capacity-building trainings for the Asia-Pacific region, with 40 beneficiary countries.

For eight years, CRIHAP has carried out continuous and effective training activities themed "ratification", "implementation", "community-based inventories", "safeguarding plan development" and "program application preparations" in East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Northeast Asia, Central Asia, and the Pacific.

Through the training from UNESCO facilitators on key concepts of the Convention, the complexity of inventory development and the important role of the "community" among them, CRIHAP conveyed the concepts and methods of intangible cultural heritage safeguarding to cultural affairs officials, community representatives, intangible cultural heritage practitioners, experts and scholars and other groups. The trainings let "on-site students" pass on what they learned through follow-up training and activities.