Roma Empowerment Through Intangible Cultural Heritage
About the Project
With the UK Government’s ratification of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage in June 2024, traditional cultural practices and expressions are enjoying increased attention from policy makers, funders, and the media. We are therefore delighted to share that our ‘Roma Empowerment Through Intangible Cultural Heritage’ project has been funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund, ensuring that we are at the forefront of Roma ICH work in Scotland.
With the significant migration of Roma people to Scotland in recent years, we recognised the need to document this change, and to begin asking questions about how, and if, ICH practices and expressions can be used to empower our communities. We want to combat the omnipresent victim narrative that plagues Roma people and removes our agency in Scotland, and tell, on our own terms, a new, positive story about Roma culture to Roma and non-Roma alike.
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By carefully recording and sharing Roma ICH widely in on and offline spaces over the next 3 years, our project will increase the visibility of our people and our culture in Scotland. We will take control of the narrative, and we will represent our culture on our own terms, in a way that makes sense to us.
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Our Services
What is Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH)?
The UNESCO Convention document defines ICH as,
‘the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as well as the instruments, objects, artefacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity’
More specifically, UNESCO identifies 5 ‘domains’ of ICH which are:
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oral traditions and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage;
The diverse Roma cultures around the world, including those in Scotland, have, as every group does, deep reservoirs of traditional cultural expressions across all of these domains (and more) which help us navigate the world around us.
Project Activities
ANDO GLASO ROMA FEST​