About the project

Dance as ICH: New models of facilitating participatory dance events (Dance - ICH) is a project starting autumn 2022. Throughout the project, nine partners from six countries will interact in the themes of facilitation of dance as intangible cultural heritage and the relationship between local dance heritage communities, museums, heritage institutions and the public. Dance - ICH aims to establish new or renewed models for facilitating participatory dance events as a co-creative process in call from heritage communities and to develop innovative methods, processes and arenas for participatory folk dancing as ICH in the 21st century.  The project will run for three and a half years.

Background

Through this project, the partners wish to establish sustainable structures to ensure that future generations feel affiliated to European cultural heritage in a participative manner. There is a need for continuing dancing participatory folk dances as contemporary practice in heritage communities all over Europe. Many heritage communities struggle to keep their intagible cultural heritage alive because of factors such as housing costs, music production expenses, marketing costs and lack of continuity of voluntary interest and effort. These factors pose a threat to heritage communities, and must be taken seriously. Thus, safeguarding activities should be implemented. The heritage sector can help with new models and strategies for sustainable safeguarding activities so that new generations in Europe will have the opportunity to learn the variety of living dance heritage. 

Goals

The nine partners want to share knowledge and strengthen the capacity and general knowledge about participatory dance and participatory dance arenas. We want to test new functions of the researcher, curator and museum workers and how these roles can facilitate and co-create with the local dance communities, in order to find sustainable solutions for the future of the dance activity.  We want to transform the museum exhibition arena into a dance arena. This is planned in five of our partner countries, in a new concept called events of practice exhibition.  

Together we will produce four international workshops in our first and second year. We plan for three days of presentations – addressing topics of dance, heritage and museum specialists – that are open for interested audience. We will discuss themes such as intangible cultural heritage and museums, dance and museums, heritage communities, participatory dance arenas, cultural brokerage, dance knowledge and dance transmission, and examples of dissemination of dance as ICH. We are eager to share the results of the ideas developed through our project, which we will test, implement, disseminate and research. Our toolbox and research publication will reveal our recommendations on new models of facilitating participatory events of practice exhibitions.

The project’s main objective is to strengthen the capacity and knowledge in the museum and the cultural heritage sector's work on dance as ICH, as a current contemporary practice, and to establish new or renewed models for participatory dance events as a co-creative process in call from heritage communities.

Measurable objectives:

  1. Strengthen the capacity and knowledge of methods for new models for facilitating participatory dance events

  2. To develop sustainable facilitator models through co-creation processes with heritage communities in safeguarding dancing as living ICH

  3. To develop digital and live events of practice dance exhibitions

The consortium has a fourfold plan of activities and outcomes:

  1. to establish theoretical and practical knowledge exchange of participatory folk dancing as ICH, - the curator, researcher and facilitator role and events of practice exhibitions through hybrid workshops and expert meetings in different countries – WP2

  2. to materialise digital and live events of practice dance exhibitions in each country - WP4

  3. to develop a sustainable facilitator model of co-creation with heritage communities in safeguarding dancing as living ICH -  WP3

  4. and disseminate material collected through the process, the methods, research outcome, and cultural heritage institution guidelines and toolbox, in national and international networks through digital channels such as websites, webinars, streaming, multi-media publications and on-site communication - WP 5 

These targets aim to answer the following key questions:

  • What are the fundamental factors, practices and infrastructures that are sustainable in different socio-economical settings/dimensions?

  • What needs to be locally adapted according to specific communities and different dancing traditions?

  • What is the role of a specific cultural institution (museums, folk dance archives, and academic and research institutions) in relation to safeguarding dancing as ICH, and in relation to different heritage communities and other institutions?

 

The partners

The partners in the project include European regional museums, universities, archives and research institutions and are as follows:

  • Norwegian centre for traditional music and dance

  • The Museums of Southern Trøndelag (MiST)

  • CEMPER, Centre for Music and Performing Arts Heritage in Flanders

  • The Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU)

  • The Slovene Ethnographic Museum (SEM)

  • ASTRA National Museum Complex

  • The Hellenic Folklore Research Centre (HFRC) - Academy of Athens

  • The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA)

  • The Hungarian Open Air Museum (Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum)

Associated partners:

  • The foundation Stiftinga Hilmar Alexandersen

  • Svenskt visearkiv