ICH in Scotland Wiki Inventory
In 2008, the UK National Commission for UNESCO (UKNC) Scotland Committee, in partnership with Museums Galleries Scotland and the Scottish Arts Council, commissioned the report Scoping and Mapping Intangible Cultural Heritage in Scotland. Following the publication of the report, Edinburgh Napier University was awarded a Knowledge Transfer Fellowship grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to bring the report’s recommendations to fruition.
The project, which is currently under development, will utilise the knowledge and expertise of partner organisations across Scotland to establish an online inventory of Scotland’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH). This inventory will both record the living aspects of Scotland’s culture and, where applicable, inform decisions concerning its possible safeguarding.
The inventory's two main aims are:
- To provide a dynamic record of Scotland’s ICH practices and thereby promote general awareness of ICH.
- To enable the easy identification of the fragility of practices (and thus enable safeguarding to take place, where this is deemed appropriate)
The inventory will take the form of a customised Wiki database. In very basic terms, this format is a collection of webpages that are both easy to navigate and easy to add to and update.
Edinburgh Napier University is currently finalising a pilot scheme for the collection and entry of data. Available data and a number of help sheets to aid with the process of further collecting data can be found on the ICH in Scotland Wiki.