Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific

You are here: Home / Archives for News

Grants for Documentary Heritage Preservation in the Asia-Pacific Region Announced

Photograph, 19th century, ‘Amerapoora. Basement of Pyathat of Kyoung No.’ by Linnaeus Tripe, salted paper print, Burma, 1855. image source: V&A Museum.

The UNESCO Memory of the World Committee for Asia-Pacific (MOWCAP) is pleased to announce the results of the 2020 round of the MOWCAP-Asia Culture Centre (ACC) Grants Program. In 2020 the grants will support eight organizations from the Asia-Pacific region to undertake projects to safeguard and make their documentary heritage collections accessible.

Grants were awarded to organizations from Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Cook Islands, Mongolia and Malaysia. Applications were received from over 30 Asia-Pacific organizations. The generous financial support of the Asia Culture Centre (ACC), and operational support of the Asia Culture Institute (ACI), has made these grants possible.

Projects supported in 2020

After careful assessment against the grant application criteria (outlined in the Grant Guidelines), the following eight projects were selected:

Two projects from Myanmar were supported: (i)  Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation Foundation and the Universities’ Central Library (University of Yangon) will collaborate to preserve and digitize a very rare collection of photographic prints by Linnaeus Tripe (see image above in this article). The prints date from the 1850s, the very beginning of photography, and depict historic sites from across Myanmar; (ii) The Save Myanmar Film Organization is an NGO dedicated to preserving and sharing the rich cinematic heritage of Myanmar. The NGO works closely with the Myanmar Ministry of Information, and the grant will be used to provide public access to surviving film lists, to catalogue historic films, and to live stream digitized classic films on social media to raise awareness about audio-visual preservation to new audiences.

Two projects from Sri Lanka were supported: (i) The Janamihira Nirmana organisaton and the Library of University of Peradeniya will work together to transcribe a rare indigenous medical palm leaf manuscript (Vāsudēva Nighantuva), then translate and publish it with a commentary in English; (ii) The Chitrasena Kalayathanaya (Dance School) and the Chitrasena Dance Company have played a major role in the development of Sri Lankan dance and dance theatre since the first half of the 20th century. This is reflected in the wealth of documentary heritage in their collection, including program books, cast lists, newspaper articles, photographic images, video and audio recordings, musical scores, props, costumes and costume design illustrations that has been amassed over the last 75 years of its existence. The ACC-MOWCAP grant is being used by the Chitrasena Vajira Dance Foundation to catalogue and digitize  this important collection.  

In Indonesia, the Indonesian Museum Music will digitise and make accessible the magazine ‘Aktuil’. This collection is significant as it documents the development of Indonesian music history from a number of genres from 1967 to 1978.

In the Cook Islands, the University of the South Pacific and the Ministry of Cultural Development, will cooperate to continue the digitisation of Cook Islands newspapers from 1981 to 2000, as well as a collection of 65 rare Cook Islands books dating back to the 1840s. Once digitization is complete it will be announced to the public to encourage the community, schools, universities and researchers to utilize these valuable digitized collections..

In Mongolia, the Cultural Heritage Council for Networking and Communication will develop a website for promotion and dissemination of the documentary heritage of Mongolia. As of 2020, a total of six (6) collections from Mongolia have been listed on the international and regional MOW registers. This project will provide  access to information about these collections and their significance in Mongolian and English.

In Malaysia, the World Heritage Moving Image Centre (WHMIC) will hold a celebration of the World Day for Audio-visual Heritage on the 27 October 2020.  The General Conference of UNESCO approved the commemoration of a World Day for Audio-visual Heritage in 2005. This is a mechanism to raise general awareness of the need to preserve and safeguard important audio-visual material for future generations, and the need for urgent measures to be taken to conserve this heritage and ensure it remains accessible to the public now, and for future generations. The WHMIC will arrange a number of events to raise awareness about audio heritage preservation in Malaysia, and will also launch a publication that was developed with the support of the MOWCAP-ACC grants in 2019.

Quote from the Chair of MOWCAP: Mr. Kwibae Kim

“The projects supported under the 2020 MOWCAP-ACC grants, and the large number of applications received from across the region, demonstrates the broad range of amazing work being done in our region to preserve and share our documentary heritage. I sincerely thank our partner, the Asia Culture Centre, whose support has made these grants possible, and also the Asia Culture Institute, who have supported the administration of the grants through the MOWCAP Office. MOWCAP congratulates the successful organisations and encourages applications for the next funding round which will open in 2021.” 

Quote from the Acting President of the ACC: Mr. Park, Taeyoung

“Congratulations to all the successful organisations. The Asia-Pacific is home to inexhaustible sources of cultural treasures. However, we have yet to fully avail ourselves of those cultural riches. Their work to capture the memory of our region, expressed through its diverse documentary heritage, ensures that future generations can appreciate and understand our regions varied and diverse history for many years to come. We will utilize them as sources of cultural resources to develop new original content and foster new cultural values for all of the region.”

Quote from the President of the Asia Culture Institute (ACI): Mr. Lee, Gipyo

“I was very impressed with the quality and range of the applications. The Asia Culture Institute is proud to work with MOWCAP to support important documentary heritage initiatives and help bring the region’s documentary heritage projects to life.”

UNESCO launches blog dedicated to documentary heritage in global health crises.

UNESCO has just launched a new blog dedicated to the importance of documentary heritage in global health crises. The blog’s inaugural post, written by Dr. Banda, argues that documentary heritage serves as a unique knowledge asset for COVID-19 decision-making, and describes three ways in which it is already contributing: i) influencing behaviour; ii) instigating national policy responses or institutional initiatives; and iii) providing an opportunity to harness technological innovation.

More blog posts will soon follow from experts, including those serving on the Sub-Committee on Education and Research (SCeaR) of the International Advisory Committee (IAC). They will draw upon records held by memory institutions (archives, libraries, museums, research organizations, etc.) to provide concrete examples of harnessing the potential of documentary heritage in individual and collective efforts to address the COVID-19 outbreak.

The articles will be featured on both the Memory of the World Programme website and the dedicated page on Resources for Documentary Heritage Professionals.

The launch of “In Living Memory” follows the publication of the UNESCO joint statement on “Turning the Threat of COVID-19 into an Opportunity for Greater Support to Documentary Heritage”, which highlights the importance of memory institutions in helping us learn from past pandemics and effectively preserving all official records related to the current crisis for future public use.

The MoW Programme, managed by UNESCO’s Documentary Heritage Unit, was set up in 1992 to identify documentary heritage of historical and world significance, preserve it, and enhance public access to it.

Do you wish to contribute to the “In Living Memory: Making the Most of Documentary Heritage in COVID-19 Decision-making”? Send us your blog post to mowsecretariat@unesco.org(link sends e-mail)!

For more information about actions to support media, enhance access to information and leverage digital technologies in the fight against the pandemic, visit: https://en.unesco.org/covid19/communicationinformationresponse.

New Publication on the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme

The volume “The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme: Key Aspects and Recent Developments” responds to the growing interest in the scientific study of the Memory of the World Programme (MoW) and its core concept of documentary heritage, which has received little attention from scholarship so far.

This publication is the sixth in the Springer Heritage Studies Series, and provides a first collection of differing approaches (including reflected reports, essays, research contributions, and theoretical reflections) for the study of the MoW Programme, offering a basis for follow-up activities.

The volume, edited by Ray Edmondson (past Chair of MOWCAP), Lothar Jordan and Anca Claudia Prodan, brings together 21 scholars from around the globe to present aspects deemed crucial for understanding MoW, its development, relevance and potential.

The aim of the publications is to encourage academic research on MoW and to enhance the understanding of its potential and place within Heritage Studies and beyond. 

The publication includes chapters from a number of experts involved in MOWCAP, including:

Ray Edmondson, Reviewing the MoW General Guidelines: Reflections on the Experience of 2015–2017;

Helen Jarvis, The Pathway to the Recommendation Concerning the Preservation of, and Access to, Documentary Heritage Including in Digital Form;

Kyung-ho Suh, History Wars in the Memory of the World: The Documents of the Nanjing Massacre and the “Comfort Women”’;

Richard Engelhardt, Methodological Convergence: Documentary Heritage and the International Framework for Cultural Heritage Protection;

Helen H. K Ieong, Memory of the World Education in Macau.

Further information on how to purchase the publication can be found here: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030184407

Women in history – Telling HERstory through Memory of the World

The UNESCO Memory of the World (MoW) programme was established in 1992, aiming to facilitate the preservation of the world’s documentary heritage, assist universal access, and increase awareness worldwide of the existence and significance of the documentary heritage. As of today, the MoW International Register contains 426 documentary heritage inscriptions from all over the world, 109 of which are from Asia and the Pacific region. 

Gender equality is one of UNESCO’s global priorities. It refers to equal rights, responses and opportunities of women and men. The priority calls for the integration of a gender perspective into all programmes and activities. However, only very few inscriptions in the MoW Registers address or promote gender equality in society or history.

The recently launched UNESCO’s Gender Equality Baseline Study of Memory of the World in Asia-Pacific demonstrates that there are only four inscriptions in the MoW Registers that highlight a gender dimension, and illustrates the lack of gender perspectives in the MoW inscribed documents. As one of the recommendations, the study suggests to “identify gender equality as a key theme for potential joint nominations, or as a thematic category across registers”.

The survey:

The survey below aims at identifying existing documentary heritage collections in the Asia-Pacific region that contain gender-related stories or that portray the achievements of women in histories. Special attention will be paid to the records and documentary heritage that tell ‘her-story’ within a view to facilitating the inclusion of gender equality as a key component for future MoW activities.

The results of the survey will be used to develop an online or offline exhibition on ‘Women in histories’ that can be showcased on the occasion of the MOWCAP 2020 General Meeting in Bangkok tentatively scheduled for 24-26 November.

UNESCO wants to have as many countries as possible represented in the exhibition and is interested in collections from the Asia-Pacific region that that tell us women’s achievements in histories, contain gender equality-related facts or events, or records that tell ‘her-story’ whether or not these collections are inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Registers.

Should you have any further question, please contact yu.hu@unesco.org.

Survey link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/MoWWomenInHistory

The 2020 MOWCAP-Asia Culture Center Grants

Important Information: The closing date for applications for a MOWCAP – ACC grant has been extended to 12 April 2020.

The MOWCAP-ACC grants program supports the efforts of the many groups and organisations that collect, preserve and provide access to documentary heritage from the Asia-Pacific region. It aims to encourage collaboration and partnerships to undertake documentary heritage related projects (such as digitisation, exhibitions, publications etc) as well as to help organisations develop skills (eg. workshops, training programs, expert assessments etc).

Grants of up to $US 5,000 are available for eligible organisations from the Asia-Pacific. Grants are required to be fully expended, and the project completed and acquitted by December 2020. The grants are administered through the MOWCAP Office, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Republic of Korea. Further information can be found the Grants Application Guidelines.

The Grants Program is made possible through the generous support of the Asia Culture Center.

Applications for the grants close on 31 March 2020.

For all grant enquiries, please contact us at: grants@mowcap.net

Grants Guidelines 2020Download
Application Form Download
Grants Agreement FormDownload
Progress Report TemplateDownload
Final Report TemplateDownload

2nd Global Policy Forum Postponed

The Memory of the World secretariat have announced that due to the rapidly evolving situation related to coronavirus, the 2nd Global Policy Forum, which was scheduled to take place from 12 to 13 May 2020 at UNESCO Headquarters, is now postponed until further notice.

We will keep you informed of any further developments, notably with regard to the new dates of the event.

2nd MoW Global Policy Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction

The MoW Programme Secretariat is organizing its 2nd MoW Global Policy Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction and Management for Sustainable Preservation of Documentary Heritage on 12-13 May 2020 at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France.

Take a look at this website to find out more about the Forum.  The registration form is available here.

Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) should note the support for travel and upkeep that may be available.

Nominations for Inscription to MOWCAP Register Remain On Hold

MOWCAP members agreed at the 8th General Meeting held from  29 May -1 June  2018 in Gwangju, Republic Korea, that the call for nominations for inscription to the MOWCAP Memory of the World register  would be made when there was certainty that the MOWCAP nomination process was as consistent as possible with the outcome of the international comprehensive review.

The 207th session of the Executive Board took place in  October 2019. The Executive Board  requested a limited-particpant working group to submit a final consolidated report on the comprehensive review to their 210th session. This means that the final outcome of the international review is not yet known and so the call for nominations for inscription to the  MOWCAP register remain on hold until the second half of 2020 at the earliest.

The Memory of the World Secretariat have prepared an advisory  Briefing and Guidance Note  on the status of the Comprehensive Review of the MoW Programme. This includes the Executive Board decision and further information on the significance of that decision. For any further clarification about the information in this Briefing and Guidance Note, or on the global comprehensive review process in general, you may contact Fackson Banda (f.banda@unesco.org), responsible for the coordination of the MoW programme at UNESCO. The MoW Secretariat has also been providing information on the review on the MoW website: https://en.unesco.org/programme/mow/review

MOWCAP has sought further advice from the MoW secretariat on the status of national registers. The advice is that National Committees should make a decision on adding inscriptions to national registers that suits their circumstances. This is particularly important for those National Committees who are part way through a nomination process.  

Opportunity to Input into the Pacific Pathway to Implement the Recommendation

MOWCAP has prepared a draft document on a pathway to implement the UNESCO Recommendation in Pacific countries. We would appreciate receiving any email comments on the document at mowcapinfo@gmail.com.

The pathway is a response to the Pacific Action Plan for Implementing the Recommendation. One of the actions was for MOWCAP to link the PARBICA toolkit to the UNESCO Recommendation so that there is a pathway for Pacific National Archives to influence the implementation of the Recommendation.

Archives New Zealand Preserves Documentary Heritage

The New Zealand National Film Unit’s ‘Weekly Review’ and ‘Pictorial Parade’ film series were inscribed on the New Zealand Memory of the World Register in 2011.

In October another milestone for the collection was celebrated. The Archives New Zealand Film Preservation team completed a 4-year project to preserve the New Zealand National Film Unit film and sound reels, including those inscribed on the New Zealand national register.

The preservation of these films saw the original films copied from acetate film stock to new, polyester film stock. This will increase the life of the films by up to 500 years. To do this the  team preserved 2.36 million feet of picture and sound footage. That’s 1,300 films made up of 3,198 separate picture and sound reels.

The project was made possible when film processing equipment was made available by a New Zealand company called Park Road Post Production. The small team of technicians who worked on the project have extensive training in film grading, printing and processing and many of the them started their careers with the production company that provided the equipment.

The National Film Unit was a New Zealand government department which operated between 1941 and 1989. The unit captured a wide variety of news and general interest stories and contributed to the cultural identity of mid-twentieth century New Zealand. 

The preservation team will now start work on preserving other film held at Archives New Zealand.

Some of the NFU films have previously been digitised and can be viewed on Archives’ YouTube channel.

Pin It on Pinterest