Introduction The Two Roles of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Emergencies

Ukraine ratified the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2008, one of the 182 state parties that have joined this initiative so far. The country made a preliminary list of 6 items in their National Register, which has now grown to 80 elements. Since 2013, three elements from Ukraine have been inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and two others are inscribed on the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding. This volume is dedicated to Ukrainian intangible cultural heritage in a state of emergency. The articles in this collection make frequent reference to the Russian invasion of 2014 and the greatly intensified war since February 2022. In some cases, they describe how the fighting has changed the form of the element of intangible heritage. More often, the authors write about how it has changed the context and meaning. In 2019, in the context of the war in Syria and the growing Covid-19 pandemic, and since then, UNESCO Secretariat of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage produced documents and programming to deal with “Intangible Cultural Heritage in Emergencies”. Following three years of reflection on intangible cultural heritage in emergencies and an expert meeting in May 2019, “Operational principles and modalities for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in emergencies” were proposed to and endorsed by the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the ICH at its fourteenth session in Bogotá, in December 2019 (UNESCO 14.COM 13) and approved in 2020 by the 8^th General Assembly of the State Parties to the 2003 Convention (UNESCO 8.GA 9). As elaborated in the introductory article by Valentyna Demian and in the closing summative article by Oleksandr Butsenko, these operational principles underline the “dual role” of ICH in emergencies, its particular vulnerability on the one hand, and also its role in strengthening community and identity, in helping to recover (UNESCO 8.GA 9). Numerous authors in this volume write of a first role – the devastation of material objects and immaterial components of culture because the context has been altered or has completely disappeared (workshops for carrying out crafts, natural settings such as forests and wetlands, and social infrastructure such as markets and festivals). Both the consumers for their cultural elements and the creators themselves have been killed or wounded, or more likely displaced from their homes to other regions or countries (some 6 million refugees within the country and 8 million displaced internationally). In spite of the dislocations, many elements of ICH survived and even rebounded after the pandemic, and some have adjusted themselves rather sustainably during the military crisis as well. The dominant theme of most contributors relates to the second role of ICH in emergencies that was mentioned by UNESCO: its value in reinforcing identity and increasing resilience in a community. Indeed, the war has powerfully changed those elements of ICH that have come to function as national symbols, making them much more potent, valued and shared. Poignant examples of the increase in the significance of ICH are described here in Butsenko’s reference to the rooster-flask that remarkably survived a bombing in the town of Borodianka (Natsional’nyi Memorial’nyi Kompleks 2022), in the activities of the kobzars described by Mykola Tovkailo, Maryna Hrymych, Myroslava Vertiuk and Andrii Levchenko, the nativity performances called vertep treated by Andriy Sendetskyy, the Petrykivka workshops worldwide which Iryna Voloshyna speaks of, the success of Ukrainian songs with folkloric references at Eurovision and countless other manifestations. The articles by Demian and Butsenko also signal the great intensification in the …