The article refers to two UNESCO conventions adopted by Poland in recent years: The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of 2003 and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions of 2005. On one hand, comparing the content of these documents allows better understanding of the keynote of the concept of safeguarding intangible national heritage applied by UNESCO, and, on the other hand, this guiding principle shows the long distance covered while shaping the vision of cultural heritage over forty years from the establishment of the Convention on Safeguarding the Cultural and Natural Heritage in 1972. To complete the picture, UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” Programme of 1992, concerning safeguarding the documentary heritage, including the digital heritage, must be mentioned.
These documents capture the diverse landscape of human cultural heritage, being complementary to each other. They are permeated by the principles of the protection and promotion of the heritage to varying degrees: equality, diversity, equivalency, share in the sustainable development, importance of an individual creator, and also an important role of the local community in this process. They indicate the evolution of the development conditions based on the cultural awareness, sense of identity, formed in the process of gradual identification of one’s own tangible and intangible heritage. They emphasize the possibility of a significant participation of culture in development. The Preamble to the Convention from 2005 contains provisions which formulate principles in a clear way, and also shed light on understanding other UNESCO conventions and programmes, especially on the particularly important Convention from 2003. The principle of non-evaluation, which applies to making new entries on the Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, so difficult to understand in the light of the experience related to the application of the criteria for making new entries on the World Heritage List, in accordance with the Convention on Protection of the Cultural and Natural Heritage from 1972, gains importance in the perspective of “cultural diversity forming a common heritage of humanity” and being “a mainspring for sustainable development for communities, peoples and nations”.
The Convention emphasizes the importance of culture for social cohesion; developmental role of exchanges and interactions between cultures based on freedom of thought, expression and information, as well as diversity of media; the importance of linguistic diversity; the importance of vitality of cultures, including for persons who belong to minorities and indigenous people, as “manifested in their freedom to create, disseminate and distribute their traditional, cultural expressions and to have access thereto, so as to benefit them for their own development”. These statements give special meaning to the main thoughts of the Convention of 2003, which indicates the fundamental importance of the local community and individual carriers in ensuring vitality of the intangible heritage as a basic condition for its protection. Hence the differences in determination of goods added to the lists established on the basis of the Convention of 1972 and of 2003. In the first case, the dominating principle is the principle of selection of the most outstanding works in a given field, based on the methodology determined by specialists using the criteria of European historical and aesthetic tradition. In the case of the Convention of 2003, there was a clear evolution towards the recognition of the values of cultural phenomena rooted in the local context, proving, first of all, the diversity and authenticity of these phenomena, with their significance in creating the culture for the local community and as a manifestation of their identity, and, with the use of tools for the protection of these phenomena/ elements, may participate in the dialogue of cultures on the national and global scale.
The process of the implementation of the Convention gives a huge chance to prepare a methodology consistent with the assumptions of the Convention of 2003, by means of activities that aim at creating the national register of the intangible heritage, and thus recognize, disseminate and maintain the richness of intangible culture in Poland which, as a result of a well conducted cultural policy consistent with the principles of the Convention of 2005, should be present in the developmental processes of our country in a creative manner.
