Winners announced for the Wiki Loves Safeguarding Living Heritage photo contest

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The Wiki Loves Living Heritage campaign has been spread around the world in 2023 celebrating the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage as well as the European Heritage Days’ theme year Living Heritage. The European photo contest related to the campaign resulted in 1700 photos in Wikimedia Commons focusing on the various forms of safeguarding living heritage. The winners of the contest come from Austria, Germany and Finland. The contest was organized by the European Network of Focal Points for the 2003 Convention (ENFP).

The winner for the contest is a photo from Austria depicting the tradition of In d’Grean gehen, a social practice of outing in the greenery of vineyards in northern Weinviertel by the user Fotografinrenate.

“With this campaign we want to highlight the diversity of heritages in the Europe of today and the various ways different communities are safeguarding them. The winning photo beautifully illustrates the knowhow related to nature and the sharing and transmission of knowledge from one generation to the other,” according to the international jury.

The second prize of the competition goes to Andreas Kreitmaier’s photo from Germany. Kreitmaeir’s photo represents the Historical Documentary Play “Landshut Wedding of 1475“ which is inscribed in the German National Inventory of Intangible Heritage. The photo skillfully captures the joy of the child depicted in the photo, showcasing the importance of children’s intangible heritage.
The third prize is given to Ville Kurki’s photo from Finland on sauna bathing, one of the Finnish heritage elements inscribed in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The jury comments that Kurki’s photo of a traditional sauna healer highlights the importance of women as heritage practitioners as well as showcases the revitalizing of sauna healing, nowadays a rarer aspect of otherwise very common Finnish sauna heritage.

New kind of cooperation

The contest centered around the theme of safeguarding living heritage. Through this campaign, The European Network of Focal Points for the 2003 Convention (ENFP) aimed not only to document living heritage, but also to underscore the immense significance of individuals who dedicate themselves to preserving, transmitting, and safeguarding our shared human heritage. The competition strived to highlight heritage bearers, practitioners, the diverse array of communities involved, and the various methods employed in the practice and transmission of intangible cultural heritage. 

Wiki Loves Living Heritage’s photo contest was a collaborative, community-driven initiative that blended online and on-the-ground activities. It activated hundreds of actors in the field of intangible heritage: focal points for the UNESCO convention, NGO’s, museums, practitioners and photographers.

The resulting photos of this competition serve as a valuable resource for documenting and safeguarding Europe’s intangible heritage. All photographs in the competition are now available for free use through Wikimedia Commons. 

Global campaign

The global Wiki Loves Living Heritage campaign has sparked a great number of activities around the world during 2023. More than one hundred inventories of living heritage have been brought to Wikidata to provide more accessibility to these inventories and more than 4 000 elements are now linked to these inventories in Wikidata. Many kinds of activities have been organized in different parts of the world.

The global campaign has been initiated by the European network of focal points for the UNESCO 2003 Convention (ENFP) and AvoinGLAM and created by organizers around the world. It has been supported by the Wikimedia Foundation, Council of Europe/ European Heritage Days, Workshop intangible heritage Flanders & Flemish Commission for UNESCO in Belgium, Quebec Council for Living Heritage, Finnish Heritage Agency, Culture Ireland, Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage, and Federal Office of Culture of Switzerland.

More information

See all the countries winning photos and finalists in https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Loves_Living_Heritage/European_photo_contest/Winners 

More about the global Wiki Loves Living Heritage campaign.

Leena Marsio, Finnish Heritage Agency leena.marsio(at)museovirasto.fi
Jorijn Neyrinck, Workshop Intangible Heritage jorijn.neyrinck(at)gmail.com
Susanna Ånäs, Avoin GLAM susanna.anas(at)gmail.com

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