Catherine McDermott, ICOM UK Secretary, talks to Catalina Cavelier leads the section of Intangible Heritage at the Cultural Heritage Institute of Bogotá, Colombia.
Catalina thank you for talking to us. Would you set out your role and responsibilities?
My responsibilities involve devising and leading strategies for safeguarding the intangible heritage in the city of Bogota, including structuring and implementing projects and programmes, working with local communities on the basis of a strong participatory practice and advising heritage listing procedures. At present, intangible heritage plays a fundamental role for the Institute’s course of action; it is understood as a tool for building a more inclusive city on the basis of recognising cultural diversity and strengthening social tissue locally. Moreover, the cultural practices, traditional knowledge and systems of social relations that make up intangible heritage are seen as social assets that add value to territorial planning and land use in the city.
How have you – professionally – been dealing with lockdown in your city?
In Colombia, lockdown measures were put in place since mid-March. Though the measures have been slowly eased, they continue to be in place and it is likely that they tighten up again very soon. Professionally this has meant working from home on a 100% basis, all contact with colleagues is virtual since Bogota is the most affected city in the country.
How is your practice continuing to develop through this situation?
Like many other cultural institutions, the current situation has opened up an opportunity to strengthen online outreach and engaging wider and maybe younger audiences. Programmes and activities that used to be based on on-site and face-to-face, such as heritage walks around the city, are now being done virtually through simple and at hand tools, such as Google Earth and Facebook live.
Have your projects and programmes needed to move online or change shape during lockdown? How have you had to adapt?
Over the last four months or so the Cultural Heritage Institute of Bogotá has been in a stage of preparation and strategic planning in the light of the new government period that has recently started, meaning that projects and programmes are only starting to operate. However, adaptation to the circumstances of lockdown and health emergency hasn’t been easy since many of the projects and programmes are based on participatory processes that commonly involve direct interaction with groups of people in local settings. Participatory practice is understood as a mandate for intangible heritage management and the challenges of putting it into practice virtually are not minor; connectivity and access are big questions when it comes to engaging with diverse and sometimes marginalised communities.
So far, we have opted for strengthening heritage outreach and dissemination of digital contents to engage younger, wider and diverse audiences, as explained above. On the other hand, the Institute has decided to allocate additional funds for the programme of public grants and awards that it runs some time ago, as a strategy to provide additional and direct support to community-based processes around cultural heritage in the light of the economic recession caused by the pandemic and its impacts on the cultural sector. New grants and awards are being designed to support local research and creativity around heritage fields that we consider to be particularly relevant under the current situation, seeking to emphasise and make visible creativity and solidarity emerging as a result of the pandemic and lockdown measures.
Some of the aspects we will promote through the grants and awards programme are: rural and urban agricultural practices and traditional marketplaces and their key role in food security, sustainability and neighbourhood economies; traditional crafts and trades and other productive activities currently stagnated; social agency around heritage and self-management processes by local communities; traditional and innovative strategies for maintaining or generating social encounter, dialogue and connectivity.
After the pandemic is under control what are the changes and challenges that you and your institute are likely to face?
As suggested above, a serious economic recession derived from the pandemic has already started showing itself and it will only become more serious over the next months and probably the next years; the effects in the cultural and heritage sector are harsh and are affecting the more vulnerable. On the other hand, the lockdown measures have impacted on elements that constitute the very nature of heritage, that is the social relations and bonds that support it and give meaning to cultural practices, places and systems of knowledge from the past in the present day. In many cases, intangible heritage safeguarding depends on people gathering, permanently connecting to each other, finding ways of living together, exchanging knowledge and experience, participating actively and effectively, building common ground and sharing values.
Under this perspective, we will face challenges related both to economic recovery, social tissue restoration and the possibilities of participation under social distancing measures. As stated before, we are committed to supporting such processes and seeking to strengthen solidary economies, as well as innovative and traditional strategies for dialogue and social encounter. Intangible heritage visible in everyday practices, present in the social fabric of the city, will prove definite to overcome this crisis by living together and connecting to each other on the basis of our shared values about the past and their role in imagining new futures.
Before the pandemic arrived, it was clear that our doings around protecting cultural heritage were to be aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals. Now it is even clearer and more pressing to walk in that direction.
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