Partners

The partner cultural heritage institutions (museums, folk dance archives, performing art centres, academic and research institutions) constitute a consortium from different parts of Europe which ensures the project’s success through their internationally acknowledged expertise in folk dancing, ICH, cultural brokerage, archiving, participatory inclusive museums and know-how exhibitions. The interdisciplinary focus of the consortium will assure the quality of the project’s outcome and recommendations for cultural heritage institutions that work with, or want to include, methods for dissemination of dance as intangible cultural heritage.

This consortium consists of beneficiaries/co-applicants from six countries: Norway, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Greece and Belgium. In addition, the project includes two associated partners, one from Norway and one from Sweden. Together the partners represent and contribute to different parts of the project through sharing and discussing new methods and socio-economic structures that are relevant for the activities tested in case studies in five of the six partner countries.  

Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance (Sff)

The Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance (Sff) is a private, independent foundation financed by the Norwegian state. The foundation started as a council for folk music and folk dance in 1972 and was established as a foundation in 1992. The foundation’s main goal is to promote, safeguard and transmit Norwegian traditional music and dance as an expression of cultural identity with unique qualities. Sff functions as a coordinator for all disciplines concerning Norwegian folk music and dance. The foundation ensures representativeness and expertise in public administration, as well as rigorous scientific work in the documentation, examination and dissemination of knowledge to provide quality and width in folk music and folk dance. Sff is an accredited UNESCO NGO.

The Norwegian Centre for Traditional Music and Dance is the project coordinator for Dancing as living heritage.

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

The Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts consists of 18 research units or institutes throughout Slovenia. It was established as an independent public research institution in 1981 and has since become the leading research and educational centre in the country, mainly in the humanities and social sciences, and one of the most prominent academic institutions in central and southeastern Europe.  The research spans from linguistics to philosophy and archaeology to biology. Their findings are of tremendous importance for a better understanding of cultural, social, and natural phenomena in Slovenia and the world. The Institute of Ethnomusicology of the ZRC, which will collaborate on this project, is concerned with historical and contemporary aspects of folk music and folk dance traditions in Slovenia. Its researchers work in various working bodies as ICH experts. 

The Slovene Ethnographic Museum (SEM)

The Slovene Ethnographic Museum is the national museum of ethnology was founded in 1923. As the central museum of ethnology in Slovenia, it has knowledge in co-creative formation of exhibitions with bearers / practitioners, adaptation of the exhibition to vulnerable groups, and creation of interactive content for children for both Slovene and non-European collections. The museum has been actively involved in the implementation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for more than a decade. With knowledge from the fieldwork and previous research, it will be able to define the views, needs and desires of the bearers / practitioners in the dance community, discuss the role of the curator in the dance community, and promote dance heritage and development of safeguarding programs. As the national Coordinator for safeguarding of the ICH in Slovenia, SEM cooperates with experts in ICH and others working in this field in Slovenia and abroad, but in the foreground keeping the cooperation with the bearers of the heritage (communities, groups and individuals).

ASTRA Museum

The open air collection of the ASTRA museum comprises buildings and objects that are characteristic to the cultural heritage of various rural communities from Romania. It is currently implementing 18 programs for audiences and communities, and more than 870 activities each year. Hundreds of craftsmen, dancers, singers, and cookers from all over the country are being an active part of the museum. The specialists are involved in field research campaigns on a regular basis, not only with the aim of documenting the tangible and intangible heritage of each community, but also in order to make people aware of the value of the heritage and involve them in the museum’s activities. These activities include workshops, craftsmanship fairs, gastronomic events, and rural communities’ fairs in the museum, where local producers and craftsmen present their culture to the visitors.

CEMPER, Centre for Music and Performing Arts Heritage in Flanders

CEMPER was set up in 2019 as a centre for expertise for musical and performing arts heritage. CEMPER strives to map, document, safeguard, and stimulate research about ICH, including all forms of dance. The centre supports and advises anyone who comes in contact with cultural heritage in the fields of music and performing arts, these being amateurs, professional practitioners, academics, inheritors or collectors. CEMPER is currently developing services around documenting ICH practices. This mainly involves audio-visual documentaries, either in the form of ‘how to’ videos or as short documentaries about ICH practices. CEMPER is a member of the Flemish ICH network and chair in the ICH expert commission of the Flemish Department of Culture. CEMPER often acts as a bridge between a heritage community and the government who makes the ICH policies, based largely on the UNESCO convention. CEMPER will contribute on the topics of cultural brokerage and community involvement in this project.   

The Hellenic Folklore Research Centre of the Academy of Athens (HFRC)

The Hellenic Folklore Research Centre of the Academy of Athens is specialized in ethnographic, folklore, anthropological and ethnological research. HFRC is specialized in collecting and documenting tangible and intangible heritage cultural facets, studying and analysing management practices and models applied a) by Public Administration (Ministries, Local Government Agencies, Public Legal Entities and Independent Administrative Authorities) and b) by local and supra-local communities in the attempt to preserve traditional knowledge and skills and transferring them to younger generations.  Since the ratification of the 2003 Convention in Greece (2006) HFRC has been one of the main advisors/consultors of the Ministry of Culture that is responsible for its implementation. HFRC has developed valuable experience through its activities framed in its intersectional approach. This has opened a “third space” of interaction in-between heritage communities in order to reveal and define the new role of the dance researcher, the dance teacher, the dance artistic director and choreographer, the dancer, and the dance archivist as facilitators for all kinds of dance heritage communities.

The Hungarian Open Air Museum (Szabadtéri Néprajzi Múzeum)

The Hungarian Open Air Museum is the largest open air museum in Hungary. The Skanzen has been handling the national tasks connected to the protection of intangible cultural heritage. The goal is to collect and publish those parts of the cultural and intellectual heritage of communities that are known as communal knowledge and tradition. Some of this intangible cultural heritage is about crafting. Skills, techniques and knowledge about materials are important in crafting and could be spread, learnt and preserved in a makerspace. The mission of the Open Air Museum is to assist renewal and self-renewal of museums in Hungary by offering methodology training and development, operating as a coordinator of networks and by sharing professional counselling in order to create modern exhibitions, a visitor- and school-friendly environment, and exciting programs which educate in an entertaining way and provide high level services at the same time. The museum’s priorities include supporting competence development in public education by introducing and disseminating modern museum education solutions extensively as well as modernising cooperation between museums and public education institutions. 

In April 2009 the Ministry for Education and Culture (today Ministry of Culture and Innovation) entrusted the coordination of tasks emanating from state implementation of the Intangible Cultural Heritage Convention to the Hungarian Open Air Museum. The Museum established the Directorate of Intangible Cultural Heritage as the structural unit coordinating all tasks related to implementation of the UNESCO Convention.

The Museums of Southern Trøndelag (MiST)

MiST is one of the largest cultural institutions in Southern Trøndelag (Norway) and consists of 12 museums and 27 places to visit. MiST takes care of, produces and disseminates knowledge about Norwegian art and cultural history through exhibitions, publications and a number of public offers adapted to different target groups. The museums are divided into categories of: Cultural History, Coastal Culture, Art and Design, and Music. For MiST, art and cultural heritage are signposts towards an unknown future and the reference point for the past. MiST’s task is to create exciting encounters between past, present and future. The institution aims to safeguard and communicate both cultural heritage and contemporary art, and through this be an active social actor and participant in the national cultural policy.

The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA)

The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, founded in 1837, is the largest state institution of higher learning in Greece, and among the largest universities in Europe. The University of Athens aims at excellence in both teaching and research in a significantly varied range of disciplines. The University of Athens consists of Academic, Administrative, Financial and Technical Units and offers a broad spectrum of services to the community that include educational, research and cultural activities. The university holds different collections divided in twenty museums, including the “Anthropology Museum” and “The Folklore Museum and Archive”.