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ICH and authority

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Megan Blakely explores the symbiotic relationship between authority and intangible cultural heritage (ICH) through the lens of Welsh ICH and legal authority.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 7, 2024

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This video video discusses the concept of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), which relates to traditions and living expressions of culture within a practicing community. It contrasts ICH with more tangible forms of culture, like museums and monuments, emphasizing that ICH encompasses social practices, rituals, knowledge, and language that are integral to a community’s identity and are passed down through generations.

The speaker focuses on how statutory authority, particularly in Wales, interacts with ICH. They note that Wales is unique in that it has a compact geographical area with its own language and reflects on historical statutory interventions that have affected Welsh culture, specifically the use of the Welsh language in education and public life, which historically marginalized it.

This video video highlights the difficulties of measuring the impact of ICH, noting that current governmental frameworks demand quantitative measurements that don’t adequately capture the value of ICH, which is more about identity and community than numerical data. There is a concern that government-sanctioned measurements could ossify practices and hinder their natural evolution.

The speaker also assesses the historical context of statutory interventions, pointing out that punitive laws against the Welsh language date back centuries, with implications that erode cultural heritage and identity. Although recent legislative changes have been made to reinstate equal status for the Welsh language, the lingering effects on community perception and value remain evident.

The discussion includes the importance of recognizing ICH in economically developed countries, as these areas often receive less attention in terms of cultural heritage protection. The speaker argues for the UK's participation in the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of ICH, which emphasizes the need for safeguarding measures and prioritizing community practices.

Finally, the speaker discusses the broader implications of recognizing and supporting ICH, including its benefits for community identity, mental health, and social outcomes. They encourage individuals to engage in conversations about ICH and to recognize its value in their lives and communities.

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ICH as you said, intangible cultural heritage has to do

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with traditions or living expressions of culture,

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of a practicing community.

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So often if you ask people what their, they think

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of when they think of culture, they might think of a museum

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or a collection of paintings or a monument.

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Whereas with ICH,

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we're talking about things more like social practices,

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rituals, traditions, knowledge.

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Um, and this includes language.

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Uh, one of the crucial factors

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that we consider when looking at whether something,

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is ICH has to do with, whether it is first central

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to the identity of a community passed down

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through generations, and it maintains this quality

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of evolving as the community practices it

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from my perspective.

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Um, when I talk about authority,

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I'm talking about legal authority.

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Um, and in the case of Wales,

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I'm talking about statutory intervention.

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So there's many different types of authority

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that might interact with ICH.

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Uh, for me, my focus is going

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to be on the statutory interventions with Wales.

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So Wales is unique

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because when we think of ICH, as I mentioned earlier,

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when we think of types of culture, we'd often think of,

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developing countries.

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Maybe we don't worry so much about these traditions

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and cultural practices around developed countries.

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So it gets less attention, which is partly why I like

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to focus on intangible practices.

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Um, Wales is also a discreet geographical area.

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It's a rather compact country with its own language.

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It's also legally interesting

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because it does not have a fully devolved government.

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So some of the rights to self-governance are reserved

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to the United Kingdom, to Westminster in England.

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So, there's ongoing statutory intervention with culture,

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and the history with Wales, particularly with language is,

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really pronounced.

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So historically Welsh culture

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and the Welsh language was very, orally focused.

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So many traditions around songs and competition, artistry

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and festivals, some of which still persist today.

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Um, and also oral histories.

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And this was a big deal during, during, you know,

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the 12 hundreds when the Edwardian conquest came through.

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And the Welsh people were sort of seen as not having much

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of a history or much of a culture

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as they didn't have the written records

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and the tangible culture that, they were looking for.

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So because the culture presented differently

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and used language as a vehicle, this really

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garnered a value judgment on,

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the Welsh culture itself.

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So that's, an ongoing relationship that still persists

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with Wales Welsh language and authority here.

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Why is the impact of ICH difficult to measure

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and why do we wanna measure it?

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Um, the current framework, we have governmentally,

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when you're looking to fund something

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or you're looking to measure how important something is,

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or should we protect it, we're now sort of asked

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to produce some kind of quantitative measurement.

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And for ICH, this is really problematic

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because it doesn't break down into units.

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Um, if you think of how you might try to measure it,

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maybe you would try to count the different types

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of renditions of songs or tickets to a festival.

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But this isn't really reflective of the value

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of ICH in a community.

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It really ties back into the identity of the community.

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Um, and it evolves.

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So if you're trying to make a distinctive unit

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that can be measured, this has the potential

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to ossify the practice

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by governmentally endorsing a particular manifestation

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of the practice, and that could interfere

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with the community practicing, the,

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the ICH and it evolving naturally.

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So that's one danger with measuring impact,

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and just by nature that it must be fluid and nebulous.

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Particularly for law, this is hugely problematic.

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So it's two,

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it's problematic on many fronts based on current structures.

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Um, as far as the impact

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of the statutory legislation, as I mentioned

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before, even as early as 1248,

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you were having legislative intervention,

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legal intervention into the use of the Welsh language.

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So as a part of, integrating whales

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into England at the time, the laws came through

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that required that all schooling be in English,

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for instance, with punitive consequences for students

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who spoke Welsh in school.

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Um, so this already limits the practice if there are

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students who either don't speak English

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or only speak English at home,

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and the messaging being that this is inferior

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or not as good as English,

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and also in relation to public administration.

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So any government activities were required

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to take place in English.

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So if you didn't speak English, you were sort

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of defacto excluded from that area.

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And this goes through, over a period of hundreds of years,

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with some of the most,

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punitive measures coming in in 1535

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and 1545,

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with similar effect preventing Welsh speakers from holding

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public office, public office, ensuring that,

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Welsh was not taught in schools or used in schools,

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and sort of an increasing exclusion

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and a message that,

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this was an inferior type of practice.

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And because it was so closely tied into cultural practices

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and cultural identity, like the oral histories

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and ways of knowing how to,

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make certain traditional crafts

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or certain traditional practices, this really

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eroded the ability of the Welsh culture to,

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proceed as it otherwise would.

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So very disruptive as far as the statutory legislation.

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And as far as language goes, the, the 1535 Law

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and Whales Act weren't actively repealed until 1993.

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So a lot of these things still stayed on the books without

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equal treatment to the Welsh language,

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despite being the native language.

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And this is why I kind of mentioned earlier on

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that there's less attention

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to economically developed countries, sort of, we focus a lot

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of legal attention on protections

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and safeguarding for ICH

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that is in less economically developed countries, sort of

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with the approach that, you know,

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domestic sovereignty will guide this on its own.

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And there's many examples

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that I think people aren't really aware of

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where this genuinely does not occur.

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So I would say that that is one major way

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that statutory legislation has impacted whales.

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Um, if you look at the Welsh speakers now,

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so if you wanna see, here's one way we can,

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we can quantify this.

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We can count who reports speaking whale Welsh, right?

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We count them. So in the census in 2011,

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there were 19%.

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Um, there was 19% of the Welsh population that said

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that they spoke Welsh in the 2021 census, this is down

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by 1.2%.

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So even though we've had, the legislative intervention

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that has backtracked on these really punitive measures,

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early on, the impact on the national psyche

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and the perception of your value, as a Welsh speaker

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seems to still, exist within,

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within that community.

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So I would say, particularly punitive use

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of statutory authority on ICH can be, hugely damaging.

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Um, often what we hear about is legal intervention

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to protect and safeguard.

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So we do have, quite a lot of domestic regulations

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that practice,

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that ensure practicing things like traditional

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craft and knowledge.

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You'll hear about that. Um,

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and I absolutely think

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that practicing communities should have the autonomy

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and support to, either

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economically develop their cultural practices

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or safeguard them in ways that they feel appropriate.

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We do have an international instrument passed in 2003

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called the Convention on the SA for the safeguarding

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of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

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And a lot of my work has been around encouraging the UK

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to join this convention.

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Um, and this was very much off the table for a long time

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because, my baby, my best example,

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my favorite example is from, scholars

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who did an interview

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with an English heritage representative.

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Um, Smith and Waterton interviewed a representative from

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English Heritage,

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and asked him about ICH in the uk

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and he said, well, the UK doesn't have any ICH, you know,

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what will we contribute to this convention?

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You know, Morris is dancing

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or something like rather flippantly.

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Um, and in fairness, I have spoken

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with representatives from English Heritage since then

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who have, evolved beyond that position.

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But 2005 is not that long ago.

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Um, and there's still this perception.

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And so in December of last year,

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the UK announced that it would join the convention.

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So there's a lot of movement in this area.

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Um, and I hadn't seen specific movements towards it

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before this, but there's a lot

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of interest in intangible cultural heritage

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in the UK right now.

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So it will be interesting to see

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what the statutory impact is

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of joining this international convention that,

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obligates members to take inventory of the ICH

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that is practiced in their, jurisdictions

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and to implement safeguarding measures.

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So it's unclear if this may contribute more to a resurgence

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of Welsh speakers, if there is this type of national

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and international recognition,

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because I think a lot of it is, communities not being

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told about or not being reinforced around the value

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of their community practices

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and not seeing it as valid culture

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where things like oral histories and traditions

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and festivals, and even things like a roast on Sunday

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or your holiday practices, are valuable bits

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of identity and community.

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So this is another interesting development

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that's occurring in this area at the moment as far

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as the importance of safeguarding, which is the function

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of the 2003 convention, really has to do

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with protecting those practicing communities from,

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this type of authority, authority and influence here.

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So, ultimately I suppose you need to think about

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what is the importance of ICH, not just the importance

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of safeguarding it.

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And ultimately, I feel like what you want to talk about

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with this has to do not directly with the practice,

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but the sort of ancillary impact

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that occurs when people have a solid sense

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of identity in their community.

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So it isn't just that we then get, fantastic crafts

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and songs and music and historical preservation,

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but when you have communities that are solid,

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with a sense of identity that are secure, you see all sorts

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of, side effects essentially to that reduction in crime.

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Uh, you might see things like improve mental health

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by people who feel secure in their communities.

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You might see things like better health outcomes in general.

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So, you know, these are things

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that are all tied into secure,

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traditional community practice.

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Um, so that sense of community

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and sense of place, which does tie back to language as well

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as those other types of more creative practices

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or traditional holidays, can all feed more into,

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overall better outcomes.

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Um, and tying back to measurement, again,

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this takes a little bit more complexity than counting the

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number of speakers to really demonstrate that.

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It really requires tying together quite a lot of,

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different disciplines, different disciplinary approaches

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and different, different disciplinary outcomes

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to tie those conclusions together.

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So, particularly for the uk, being able

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to raise the profile with this convention,

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will be a really interesting exercise in

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how we approach measurement

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and how we approach legislation in areas

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of practice that touch on this.

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Um, one other area of of practice here

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that ties quite into legal regulation,

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if you think about things like festivals and music

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and oral history,

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and the cultural tendency to fix, works

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in a tangible medium of expression.

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So paintings, writing things down,

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recording things for posterity,

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we have this cultural tendency to consider that value

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and to consider that necessary.

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And with technology becoming so much more accessible

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to people, it's even easier to do this.

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If you think about legal regimes like intellectual property

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law where copyright will immediately create proprietary

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rights to things that are literary

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or artistic that are fixed in a tangible

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medium of expression.

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Um, there's even further implications with ICH as far as

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what if property rights are immediately created for someone

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who records one of those traditional songs,

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and they can then prevent other people from,

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publicly performing that particular rendition of that song.

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Or maybe they decide to commercialize it in a way that

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practicing community doesn't appreciate.

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And you can see a lot of this, for instance,

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with tartan, right, tartan fabric, if you think about that,

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has identity of a community that is attached to that

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where, it reflects practices in the weaving,

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it reflects practices in the storytelling alongside

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the colors in the tartan.

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But you also see quite a lot of,

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commercial exploitation of tartan that doesn't associate

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anything with the practicing community,

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and actively tries to commercially exploit.

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So I think there's a lot of legal mechanisms that are

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endorsed by authorities like the law, like governments,

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that make it even more important to ensure

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that we're recognizing the value

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and the voice of communities

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that have an identity associated with the ICH.

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Usually my conclusion is

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that we should join the 2003 conventions.

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I've had to, to modify my conclusions

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of my work since the 23rd of December of last year.

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Um, I'm, I'm absolutely fascinated to see where this goes.

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Um, I've been in conversations

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with some various entities about how this came to be.

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Uh, there's a government consultation out right now.

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I would absolutely encourage anyone who has ICH

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as a practice to either respond to the consultation

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or to keep an eye out for when the government calls come

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for communities to put forward their ICH.

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Um, I'd also encourage people to think about

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what constitutes ICH in their life.

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So, whether it be your Sunday roast on dinner

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or in the UK Boxing Day,

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or, you know,

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whatever particular local traditions we have,

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I'm not sure all of the local traditions in the UK are

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really even properly documented.

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Um, but these are carried on

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and people who are from those particular areas carry them on

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and they have meaning for them.

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So, so one of my colu conclusions would,

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would be a recommendation to watch these sorts of calls

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and to contribute your own ICH

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and to recognize the value of those things

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that are important in the evolution

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of your community identity.

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As far as the work goes around the legal side of things,

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really examining the wider reaching impacts of certain types

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of legislation that have to do with community practices,

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including language, including traditional crafts,

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including things that have a lot of value to communities

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that may not be immediately, translatable into

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An economic return.

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So, so the implications of this, I think, are really clear

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around the greater benefits, the longer term strategy as far

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as ensuring that the law takes into consideration the wider

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implications of things that are seen as,

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maybe tertiary to, to main mainstream litigation

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and how important those are.

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There's many jurisdictional

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and historic, lessons around the impacts of this

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and how important it is for communities to be able to have

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that evolving identity reflecting kind of ICH.

00:00 - ICH as you said, intangible cultural heritage has to do with traditions or living expressions of culture, of a practicing community. So often if you ask people what their, they think of when they think of culture, they might think of a museum or a collection of paintings or a monument.

00:21 - Whereas with ICH, we're talking about things more like social practices, rituals, traditions, knowledge. and this includes language. one of the crucial factors that we consider when looking at whether something, is ICH has to do with, whether it is first central to the identity of a community passed down through generations, and it maintains this quality of evolving as the community practices it

00:51 - from my perspective. when I talk about authority, I'm talking about legal authority. and in the case of Wales, I'm talking about statutory intervention. So there's many different types of authority that might interact with ICH. for me, my focus is going to be on the statutory interventions with Wales. So Wales is unique

01:12 - because when we think of ICH, as I mentioned earlier, when we think of types of culture, we'd often think of, developing countries. Maybe we don't worry so much about these traditions and cultural practices around developed countries. So it gets less attention, which is partly why I like to focus on intangible practices. Wales is also a discreet geographical area. It's a rather compact country with its own language. It's also legally interesting

01:44 - because it does not have a fully devolved government. So some of the rights to self-governance are reserved to the United Kingdom, to Westminster in England. So, there's ongoing statutory intervention with culture, and the history with Wales, particularly with language is, really pronounced. So historically Welsh culture and the Welsh language was very, orally focused. So many traditions around songs and competition, artistry and festivals, some of which still persist today.

02:24 - and also oral histories. And this was a big deal during, during, you know, the 12 hundreds when the Edwardian conquest came through. And the Welsh people were sort of seen as not having much of a history or much of a culture as they didn't have the written records and the tangible culture that, they were looking for. So because the culture presented differently and used language as a vehicle, this really garnered a value judgment on,

02:56 - the Welsh culture itself. So that's, an ongoing relationship that still persists with Wales Welsh language and authority here. Why is the impact of ICH difficult to measure and why do we wanna measure it? the current framework, we have governmentally, when you're looking to fund something or you're looking to measure how important something is, or should we protect it, we're now sort of asked to produce some kind of quantitative measurement.

03:25 - And for ICH, this is really problematic because it doesn't break down into units. if you think of how you might try to measure it, maybe you would try to count the different types of renditions of songs or tickets to a festival. But this isn't really reflective of the value of ICH in a community. It really ties back into the identity of the community. and it evolves. So if you're trying to make a distinctive unit

03:55 - that can be measured, this has the potential to ossify the practice by governmentally endorsing a particular manifestation of the practice, and that could interfere with the community practicing, the, the ICH and it evolving naturally. So that's one danger with measuring impact, and just by nature that it must be fluid and nebulous. Particularly for law, this is hugely problematic. So it's two,

04:25 - it's problematic on many fronts based on current structures. as far as the impact of the statutory legislation, as I mentioned before, even as early as 1248, you were having legislative intervention, legal intervention into the use of the Welsh language. So as a part of, integrating whales into England at the time, the laws came through that required that all schooling be in English, for instance, with punitive consequences for students

05:02 - who spoke Welsh in school. so this already limits the practice if there are students who either don't speak English or only speak English at home, and the messaging being that this is inferior or not as good as English, and also in relation to public administration. So any government activities were required to take place in English. So if you didn't speak English, you were sort

05:28 - of defacto excluded from that area. And this goes through, over a period of hundreds of years, with some of the most, punitive measures coming in in 1535 and 1545, with similar effect preventing Welsh speakers from holding public office, public office, ensuring that, Welsh was not taught in schools or used in schools, and sort of an increasing exclusion and a message that,

05:57 - this was an inferior type of practice. And because it was so closely tied into cultural practices and cultural identity, like the oral histories and ways of knowing how to, make certain traditional crafts or certain traditional practices, this really eroded the ability of the Welsh culture to, proceed as it otherwise would. So very disruptive as far as the statutory legislation. And as far as language goes, the, the 1535 Law

06:31 - and Whales Act weren't actively repealed until 1993. So a lot of these things still stayed on the books without equal treatment to the Welsh language, despite being the native language. And this is why I kind of mentioned earlier on that there's less attention to economically developed countries, sort of, we focus a lot of legal attention on protections and safeguarding for ICH that is in less economically developed countries, sort of

06:59 - with the approach that, you know, domestic sovereignty will guide this on its own. And there's many examples that I think people aren't really aware of where this genuinely does not occur. So I would say that that is one major way that statutory legislation has impacted whales. if you look at the Welsh speakers now, so if you wanna see, here's one way we can, we can quantify this.

07:28 - We can count who reports speaking whale Welsh, right? We count them. So in the census in 2011, there were 19%. there was 19% of the Welsh population that said that they spoke Welsh in the 2021 census, this is down by 1.2%. So even though we've had, the legislative intervention that has backtracked on these really punitive measures, early on, the impact on the national psyche and the perception of your value, as a Welsh speaker

08:07 - seems to still, exist within, within that community. So I would say, particularly punitive use of statutory authority on ICH can be, hugely damaging. often what we hear about is legal intervention to protect and safeguard. So we do have, quite a lot of domestic regulations that practice, that ensure practicing things like traditional craft and knowledge.

08:38 - You'll hear about that. and I absolutely think that practicing communities should have the autonomy and support to, either economically develop their cultural practices or safeguard them in ways that they feel appropriate. We do have an international instrument passed in 2003 called the Convention on the SA for the safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. And a lot of my work has been around encouraging the UK

09:10 - to join this convention. and this was very much off the table for a long time because, my baby, my best example, my favorite example is from, scholars who did an interview with an English heritage representative. Smith and Waterton interviewed a representative from English Heritage, and asked him about ICH in the uk and he said, well, the UK doesn't have any ICH, you know,

09:40 - what will we contribute to this convention? You know, Morris is dancing or something like rather flippantly. and in fairness, I have spoken with representatives from English Heritage since then who have, evolved beyond that position. But 2005 is not that long ago. and there's still this perception. And so in December of last year, the UK announced that it would join the convention.

10:08 - So there's a lot of movement in this area. and I hadn't seen specific movements towards it before this, but there's a lot of interest in intangible cultural heritage in the UK right now. So it will be interesting to see what the statutory impact is of joining this international convention that, obligates members to take inventory of the ICH that is practiced in their, jurisdictions

10:38 - and to implement safeguarding measures. So it's unclear if this may contribute more to a resurgence of Welsh speakers, if there is this type of national and international recognition, because I think a lot of it is, communities not being told about or not being reinforced around the value of their community practices and not seeing it as valid culture where things like oral histories and traditions and festivals, and even things like a roast on Sunday

11:10 - or your holiday practices, are valuable bits of identity and community. So this is another interesting development that's occurring in this area at the moment as far as the importance of safeguarding, which is the function of the 2003 convention, really has to do with protecting those practicing communities from, this type of authority, authority and influence here. So, ultimately I suppose you need to think about what is the importance of ICH, not just the importance

11:45 - of safeguarding it. And ultimately, I feel like what you want to talk about with this has to do not directly with the practice, but the sort of ancillary impact that occurs when people have a solid sense of identity in their community. So it isn't just that we then get, fantastic crafts and songs and music and historical preservation, but when you have communities that are solid, with a sense of identity that are secure, you see all sorts

12:19 - of, side effects essentially to that reduction in crime. you might see things like improve mental health by people who feel secure in their communities. You might see things like better health outcomes in general. So, you know, these are things that are all tied into secure, traditional community practice. so that sense of community and sense of place, which does tie back to language as well as those other types of more creative practices

12:52 - or traditional holidays, can all feed more into, overall better outcomes. and tying back to measurement, again, this takes a little bit more complexity than counting the number of speakers to really demonstrate that. It really requires tying together quite a lot of, different disciplines, different disciplinary approaches and different, different disciplinary outcomes to tie those conclusions together. So, particularly for the uk, being able

13:28 - to raise the profile with this convention, will be a really interesting exercise in how we approach measurement and how we approach legislation in areas of practice that touch on this. one other area of of practice here that ties quite into legal regulation, if you think about things like festivals and music and oral history, and the cultural tendency to fix, works

14:00 - in a tangible medium of expression. So paintings, writing things down, recording things for posterity, we have this cultural tendency to consider that value and to consider that necessary. And with technology becoming so much more accessible to people, it's even easier to do this. If you think about legal regimes like intellectual property law where copyright will immediately create proprietary rights to things that are literary

14:31 - or artistic that are fixed in a tangible medium of expression. there's even further implications with ICH as far as what if property rights are immediately created for someone who records one of those traditional songs, and they can then prevent other people from, publicly performing that particular rendition of that song. Or maybe they decide to commercialize it in a way that practicing community doesn't appreciate. And you can see a lot of this, for instance,

15:06 - with tartan, right, tartan fabric, if you think about that, has identity of a community that is attached to that where, it reflects practices in the weaving, it reflects practices in the storytelling alongside the colors in the tartan. But you also see quite a lot of, commercial exploitation of tartan that doesn't associate anything with the practicing community, and actively tries to commercially exploit. So I think there's a lot of legal mechanisms that are

15:44 - endorsed by authorities like the law, like governments, that make it even more important to ensure that we're recognizing the value and the voice of communities that have an identity associated with the ICH. Usually my conclusion is that we should join the 2003 conventions. I've had to, to modify my conclusions of my work since the 23rd of December of last year. I'm, I'm absolutely fascinated to see where this goes.

16:14 - I've been in conversations with some various entities about how this came to be. there's a government consultation out right now. I would absolutely encourage anyone who has ICH as a practice to either respond to the consultation or to keep an eye out for when the government calls come for communities to put forward their ICH. I'd also encourage people to think about what constitutes ICH in their life. So, whether it be your Sunday roast on dinner

16:45 - or in the UK Boxing Day, or, you know, whatever particular local traditions we have, I'm not sure all of the local traditions in the UK are really even properly documented. but these are carried on and people who are from those particular areas carry them on and they have meaning for them. So, so one of my colu conclusions would, would be a recommendation to watch these sorts of calls

17:13 - and to contribute your own ICH and to recognize the value of those things that are important in the evolution of your community identity. As far as the work goes around the legal side of things, really examining the wider reaching impacts of certain types of legislation that have to do with community practices, including language, including traditional crafts, including things that have a lot of value to communities that may not be immediately, translatable into

17:48 - An economic return. So, so the implications of this, I think, are really clear around the greater benefits, the longer term strategy as far as ensuring that the law takes into consideration the wider implications of things that are seen as, maybe tertiary to, to main mainstream litigation and how important those are. There's many jurisdictional and historic, lessons around the impacts of this and how important it is for communities to be able to have

18:21 - that evolving identity reflecting kind of ICH.

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