Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific

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Documentary Heritage Grants Announced for 2021

The UNESCO Memory of the World Committee for Asia-Pacific (MOWCAP) is pleased to share the results of the 2021 round of the Asia Culture Centre (ACC)-MOWCAP Grants Program.

In 2021, twenty-six (26) applications were assessed against the application criteria (outlined in the Grant Guidelines), with twelve (12) organizations from nine (9) countries in the Asia-Pacific region awarded grants. These grantees are from Australia, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Tuvalu and Vietnam and will undertake projects to preserve and make their documentary heritage collections accessible.

The ACC-MOWCAP Small Grants Programme is made possible through the generous financial support of the Asia Culture Center (ACC). Over $50,000 USD was awarded under the 2021 grants cycle.

Quote from the President of the ACC: Mr Choi Wonil

“Congratulations to all the 2021 grantees. Your 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. The projects include a number of initiatives to digitise documentary heritage, which is extremely important given the COVID-19 pandemic and the need and make documentary heritage accessible online. The Asia Culture Center is proud to work with MOWCAP to support important documentary heritage initiatives and help bring the region’s documentary heritage projects to life.”

Quote from the Chair of MOWCAP: Mr Kwibae Kim

“The projects supported under the 2021 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 early 2022.”

Projects Supported in 2021

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New MOWCAP-ACC Publication highlights diverse collections from the Asia-Pacific

MOWCAP and the Asia-Culture Centre (ACC) have collaborated to create a publication that highlights the many interesting projects undertaken under the ACC-MOWCAP Small Grants Programme (2018-2020).

Over the past three years, MOWCAP has partnered with the ACC to support 28 innovative projects in 13 countries aiming to protect the documentary heritage of the Asia-Pacific region. So far over $100,000 USD has been awarded as part of the programme.

The projects aim to safeguard and share the precious recorded memories that are at risk of damage, including films and documentaries containing the unique culture and identity of our region. This publication aims to create a snapshot of the important work completed under the various projects and highlight the importance of preserving these cultural records in the Asia-Pacific region.

MOWCAP would like to deeply thank everyone at the ACC and Asia Culture Institute (ACI) for their endless support during the past three years to launch the successful ACC-MOWCAP Small Grants Programme, and look forward to further strengthening our partnership in the future.

The publication can be downloaded in English or Korean.

Applying the Gender Equality Lens to the Memory of the World Programme

UNESCO’s Memory of the World (MoW) programme was established with the objectives of facilitating preservation, enhancing universal access, and increasing awareness worldwide of the existence and significance of the world’s documentary heritage.

As  one  of  UNESCO’s  global  priorities,  gender  equality  is  required  to  be  integrated  across  all  of  the  Organization’s  programmes,  processes  and  policies  through  two   distinct   but   complementary   approaches:   gender   mainstreaming;   and   gender-specific  initiatives.  Unfortunately,  to  date,  neither  of  these  approaches  has  been fully reflected in the Memory of the World Programme.

The Gender Equality Baseline Study of Memory of the World in Asia-Pacific reviewed the MoW inscriptions from Asia and the Pacific both on the international and regional registers with a gender lens and assessed the degree of gender sensitivity of the inscribed documentary heritage. As of today there  are  426  inscriptions  on  the  international  register  –  including  109  from  the  Asia-Pacific region – and 56 inscriptions on the regional Asia-Pacific register, among which only four highlight the gender dimension. Only one inscription is recognized as effectively being gender transformative and contributing to the promotion of gender equality.

This lack of a gender equality perspective is clearly visible in  the  nomination  forms  and  the  General  Guidelines  of  the  Programme.  As  a  result,  the  many  women  who  have  made  remarkable  contributions to the history of the world are not being recognized appropriately.

UNESCO encourages all those intending to nominate documentary heritage to a MoW register to read this publication and act on its findings and recommendations in order to record the significant roles that women have played in the world’s history.

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.”

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

Announcements of the 2019 MOWCAP-ACC Small Grants Program

We are pleased to announce the results of the 2019 round of the MOWCAP-Asia Culture Center (ACC) Grants program. This year the grants will support fourteen (14) organisations from across the Asia-Pacific to safeguard and make their documentary heritage collections accessible.

Grants were awarded to organisations from Cambodia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Timor-Leste and Vietnam. Applications were received from organisations from over 35 countries.

The generous financial support of the Asia Culture Center (ACC), and operational support of the Asia Culture Institute (ACI), has made these grants possible.

Statements from MOWCAP, ACC and the ACI:

Dr. Lee Jinsik, Acting President of the ACC, congratulated all the successful organisations and shared that “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.”

Mr. Lee Gi Pyo, President of the ACI, outlined that he 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.”

Mr. Kwibae Kim, Chair of MOWCAP, shared that “the projects supported under the 2019 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, Asia Culture Center, whose support has made these grants possible, and also 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 early 2020.”

[Read more…]

The 2019 MOWCAP-ACC Grants are now open

In the Asia Pacific region, many libraries, archives and memory institutions face formidable challenges: economic, climatic and geographic. The newly established MOWCAP-ACC Grants Program aims to contribute to addressing this challenge by assisting with the preservation of, and universal access to, the documentary heritage of the Asia/Pacific region, and also to increase awareness of the existence and significance of the heritage.

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

Grants of up to $US 5,000 are available for the preservation and sharing of the documentary heritage of the Asia-Pacific. Grants are required to be fully expended, and the project completed and acquitted, within a 6-month period (July-December 2019). The grants are administered through the MOWCAP Office, Asia Culture Center, Gwangju, Republic of Korea.

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

Download the Grants Guidelines

Download the Application Form

Applications for the grants close on 31 May 2019

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

Results of the 2018 MOWCAP-ACC Grants

The Envoyship Journey to China : Documentary heritage inscribed on the UNESCO MoW Regional Register in 2018 and translated/published as part of the MOWCAP-ACC grants program.

The 2018 MOWCAP-ACC Grants Program has led to some diverse and exciting projects and partnerships across the Asia-Pacific. Below is a brief summary of the results of the 2018 Program.

The MOWCAP-ACC Small Grants Programme is made possible through the generous support of the Asia Culture Center.

  • In Timor-Leste, Timor-Aide worked to make digital copies of the Baguia Collection available to the people of Timor-Leste. This collection has 300 black and white photographs circa 1935, which include original images of the communities of Makasae and Naueti.
  • In the Philippines, the Center for New Cinema held a two-day workshop in cooperation with UNESCO, focusing on the study and use of motion pictures and how they can provide knowledge about the rich documentary heritage of the Southeast Asian region.
  • Tuvalu has recently formed a National Memory of the World Committee, and the MOWCAP-ACC Grants were used to hold a workshop to develop a national register of documentary heritage and a work plan for the Committee.
  • The University of the South Pacific’s (USP) archives, located in Fiji, contain a wealth of documentary heritage relating to the Pacific region. The MOWCAP-ACC Grants is helping bring an expert in the ICA-AtoM (web-based archival description software) to implement the system at USP and improve access to this collection through.
  • The Save Myanmar Film Organization is an NGO dedicated to preserving and sharing the rich cinematic heritage of Myanmar. The grant funds were used to procure archival equipment that is crucial for preserving a film archives collection.
  • The Envoyship Journey to China collection, held in Vietnam, was recognized on the regional Memory of the World register in 2018 for its significance for understanding Vietnamese-China relations. The grant was used translate the documentary heritage into English and publish the English translation, making the collection accessible to the wider world.
  • The Archaeological Documents and Reports of Iran (from 1908 to 1941) relating to the Persepolis and the Tomb of Cyrus the Great, held by the Documentation Centre of Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization, have begun to be digitized and made accessible through a web-based platform.
  • The MOWCAP-ACC Grants grant supported the creation of a documentary film about the Hikayat Hang Tuah, documentary heritage from Malaysia recognized on the international MoW Register in 2001

The 2019 round of the MOWCAP-ACC Grants are now open: http://www.mowcapunesco.org/grants/

Announcements of Grants for Documentary Heritage in the Asia-Pacific Region

The UNESCO Memory of the World Committee for Asia Pacific (MOWCAP) is pleased to announce the results of the 2018 round of the MOWCAP-Asia Culture Centre (ACC) Grants Program.

The Program will support eight organizations from the Asia Pacific region to undertake projects to safeguard and make their documentary heritage collections accessible (details of the projects supported can be found below).

Grants were awarded to organizations from Timor-Leste, the Philippines, Tuvalu, Fiji, Myanmar, Vietnam, Iran and Malaysia. Applications were received from over 20 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.

[Read more…]

Myanmar News

UNESCO has been working with stakeholders in Myanmar to support the identification, preservation and access to the country’s documentary heritage within the framework of the Malaysia-UNESCO Cooperation Programme. In cooperation with the Myanmar National Commission for UNESCO and the Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation.

Read more about this important initiative including the workshop that took place in Yangon on 20, 21 February 2018.