CIP Participatory Inventory Training at the Meeting

Reunion is rich in diversity of cultural practices. A heritage of necessity, the fruit of the creative ability initiated by the ancestors (Africans, Asians, Comorians, Europeans, Malagasy, Muslims for the main cultural areas), in the context of colonial slavery and Engagism. Creations long denied, hierarchical, denied and sometimes forbidden.

What will become intangible cultural heritage (ICP) is this: living, this present that is celebrated. It is the life of people in their multiple relationships to their environments, their activities and the moments of life in the relationships woven within communities and beyond in the routes taken by the elements of culture according to the contexts and the history between (our) territories.

In order to implement this new heritage paradigm, it was up to the Réunion Region to take action for the benefit of the communities of practitioners involved, professional or not.

After the 2016 and 2017 sessions conducted by the Maison des Cultures du Monde-Centre français du patrimoine culturel immatériel, the Regional Inventory Service has developed an annual training offer (sessions 2018 and 2019).

A process of immersion is experienced in cultures specific to the territory of Reunion, as a field of re-appropriation, as a critical space and as a space of action, notably through the programming of inventories and the questioning of the main values of the 2003 UNESCO Convention.

Prior to this program, we had no entries in either the Réunion Regional Inventory or the CIP National Inventory in France.

Today four elements are registrants and fifteen inventories are under construction: the braiding of the darling straw, the cutting of the stone, the making of the galabé, the festival of the guava, the Séga as well as its costumes, hand games, lifestyles such as the «art of resistance» in the Cirque de Mafate, knife baptism, Tamil ball, traditional fishing, bouquet la tête and in collaboration with the Mayotte Department: pottery and the art of tickling.

This management allows us to better understand the resistance to inventory and to act on the valuation levers with the voluntary actors.

This is the purpose of the refunds, the development of an industry for the braiding of vegetable fibres (in the case of vacoa) or the project to create a digital publishing to present each contributed item (Karné project).

Restitution of the presentation of the PCI’s "Le conte traditionnel à la Réunion: Rakontaz zistoir"

With the support of the Maison des Cultures du Monde - Centre français du patrimoine culturel immatériel and the Department of Mayotte