In recent years, Indonesia has redoubled its efforts to safeguard the tremendous diversity of its intangible cultural heritage (ICH), both within the country and at the international level. During several days in Jakarta, US Fulbright Scholar Dr Frank Proschan presented three talks on various aspects of safeguarding ICH, drawing upon his experience as a member of UNESCO’s secretariat for the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, and his nearly half-century of work safeguarding ICH in the US and in Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.

A consistent thread uniting the three talks was the importance of community involvement in safeguarding their own heritage. At the University of Indonesia, Proschan emphasized that tomorrow’s ICH experts need to be trained to collaborate actively with community members and need to be willing to give up some of the authority previously guarded by experts, since the 2003 Convention considers communities themselves to be the primary authorities on their own ICH.

For the Association for Traditional Literature, Proschan emphasized the various roles that communities have in different safeguarding measures and activities and the importance of their wide involvement and free, prior and informed consent.