Intangible Cultural Heritage

Intangible heritage includes traditions or living expressions inherited from our ancestors and passed on to our descendants, such as oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, rituals, festive events, knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe or the knowledge and skills to produce traditional crafts.
Among the various factors contributing to the preservation of intangible heritage, those related to the economic sphere have so far been underestimated or subsumed into reductive concepts in terms of variety and complexity. Through research, support and capacity building activities, Fondazione Santagata devotes its attention to several of these open themes, ranging from the forms of governance that shape decision making and transmission in heritage communities; to work conditions of heritage bearers and their perspective as cultural entrepreneurs; to the contribution of intangible heritage in the cultural capital of territories.

A further area of action concerns the support to heritage communities – especially those expressing elements inscribed in the UNESCO ICH List – in the preparation of plans of safeguard, strategic documents aimed to direct the implementation of measures of safeguard and to accompany the development and intergenerational change within communities.