Sustaining Intangible Cultural Practices in Contexts of Forced Displacement

Foundations for Research, Policy, and Practice

Globally, over 120 million people are forcibly displaced—a figure that has risen each year over the last decade. This figure seems likely to grow further in coming years, amid intersecting global geopolitical and environmental crises.

The world over, displaced people encounter major barriers to sustaining and transmitting their intangible cultural practices. When people are displaced, cultural practices can be lost. Cultural losses compound the challenges of forced displacement for individuals and communities, and inhibit international efforts to safeguard at-risk intangible cultural practices.

These intangible cultural practices include oral traditions and expressions, performing arts, traditional crafts, social practices, rituals and festive events, and knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe. They are powerful forces in cultural identity, and they often increase psychosocial wellbeing and social connection for those who practice them.

Sustaining Intangible Cultural Practices in Contexts of Forced Displacement: Foundations for Research, Policy, and Practice convenes a transdisciplinary consortium of researchers, civil sector partners, and people with lived experience of forced displacement to provide urgently needed expertise on how intangible cultural practices can be supported and sustained in contexts of forced displacement.

Banner image (top): "Tatreez" sample from a program of partner organisation A.R.T. (Art for Refugees in Transition) in Dheisheh refugee camp, West Bank, Palestine. Photo credit: Fadwa Abbad. Courtesy of Sara Green / A.R.T.. Used with permission.

Project Aims

identify key challenges in practising, transmitting, protecting, and maintaining intangible cultural practices through the experience of forced displacement and resettlement, and possible solutions for those challenges;
identify potential roles for host societies, governments, civil sector organisations, and international cultural and refugee agencies in valuing and supporting those cultural practices and their human bearers;
develop and disseminate a suite of resources to inform policy and research directions and applied strategies supporting cultural sustainability in situations where people are displaced.

Overall, the project seeks to advance global efforts to achieve prosperous, equitable social and cultural futures for displaced people and their host societies.

Image (left): The ceramic industry in the city of Hebron in the south of the occupied West Bank of Palestine dates back hundreds of years. For the millions of Palestinians who have experienced displacement due to war, occupation, settlement expansion, and ongoing violence, cultural practice is an important form of cultural resilience and resistance. Photo: Aya Mattour, CC via Wikimedia Commons, 2017.