GLAM/Newsletter/February 2023/Contents/Wiki Loves Living Heritage report

This Month in GLAM – Volume XIII, Issue II, February 2023

Wiki Loves Living Heritage report

Wiki Loves Living Heritage launches 17 March 1pm UTC

Year 2023 celebrates Living Heritage globally with the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Wiki Loves Living Heritage invites heritage communities, Wikimedia volunteers, safeguarding organizations and Intangible Cultural Heritage focal points around the world to document and share Living Heritage together.

Wiki Loves Living Heritage will be reporting on its activities in a dedicated section of This Month in GLAM in 2023.

Launch event

Join the launch event on 17 March 13–14.30 UTC to learn & get excited about the project!

The project will be opened by Tim Curtis (UNESCO), Satdeep Gill (Wikimedia Foundation), Leena Marsio (Finnish Heritage Agency) and Jorijn Neyrinck (Workshop Intangible Heritage Flanders) representing the ENFP European Network of Focal Points in the UNESCO 2003 Convention and Sergey Bazarya (Council of Europe).

It will be presented through examples of Wikimedia activities bringing intangible cultural heritage online and briefly introducing the different ways of contributing to the project. There will be time for questions and answers.

Browse Living Heritage around the world

The project website displays intangible cultural heritage elements from around the world. In addition to the elements inscribed by UNESCO, items inventoried nationally or selected manually are displayed in pages listing them with images and links. The listings can serve as launchpads for media uploads or collections of items for editathons or translation campaigns. All information can be translated to all Wikimedia languages. It is possible to create a language-independent page for each heritage element, that can be used to collect information and resources for every language Wikipedia.

Focus on Living Heritage

The website's main page will function as a publication and a window to events taking place around the world. It is a space for writings and reports, galleries and videos. Materials will be archived and made translatable. The project focuses especially on ethical considerations around documenting living heritage. The Ethical sharing webinar in April will take a closer look at the topic.

Join the activities!

We are inviting affiliates and volunteers to join the activities

Start organizing: Team up with the local heritage communities and UNESCO intangible cultural heritage coordinators and create bigger or smaller activities together. Find your local contacts here.
Share widely: Use the Wiki Loves Living Heritage site and all the social media channels of the project and the partners to share your activities online. The campaign highlights living heritage around the world throughout 2023.
Contribute to Wikimedia projects: Make living heritage more visible on Wikimedia projects by adding data to Wikidata, photographing and adding media to Wikimedia Commons and editing Wikipedia articles. We are looking for people to help import the national inventories of living heritage to make the local heritage elements visible in the project.
Inspire and be inspired: Help others contribute to Wikimedia projects by sharing your learnings and models with other affiliates, communities and heritage coordinators.