Report international launch Toolbox 'Filming Living Heritage'

The international webinar ‘Focus Craftership: Toolbox Filming Living Heritage’, organised by Workshop intangible heritage Flanders and Bokrijk - Craftership and Heritage on Tuesday 28 May 2024 also marked the launch of the new toolbox.

This toolbox for Filming Living Heritage aims at supporting the global community of people and organisations dedicated to safeguarding living heritage.

As many as 179 interested people from 50 countries across the globe participated in the online launch meeting. It revealed a strong interest and need for furthering methodologies and capacity building on audiovisual ways of documenting ICH. 

Jorijn Neyrinck (Workshop intangible heritage Flanders), opened the webinar and introduced the speakers. Besides giving an insight into how the methodology and online toolbox were developed, the programme also offered telling practical experiences full of useful tips & tricks from both the lead videographer and living heritage professionals.

Hilde Schoefs (Bokrijk - Craftership & Heritage) explained how the ‘Focus Craftership' project came into being. The search for the right partners started with the basic principle of putting practitioners at the heart of the project: the idea was to work together with them from the very start and include them in all aspects of audiovisually documenting their heritage practice.
Bokrijk - Craftership & Heritage joined forces with Workshop intangible heritage Flanders to develop the methodology on filming living heritage. Together with CAG, CEMPER, ETWIE, Histories and Parcum, they set to work testing it out. FARO was on hand for support. 
A special part of the team was Alexander Kerkhof (Feathers on Wings), as he was both the lead filmmaker and acted also as a bridge builder between the heritage community and the heritage professional. 

From her own experience as project coordinator, Lieve De Saedeleer (Bokrijk - Craftership & Heritage) revealed how the ‘Focus Craftership’ project took place and what challenges it brought with it. ‘Commitment means going on a journey together’ - a mantra Lieve and the rest of the team steadfastly worked by. 
The project itself involved filming 11 crafterships and living heritage practices, each with its own focus and rhythm*. Balancing all the different agendas, needs and questions within each trajectory was a big task, one that yielded many valuable lessons as well as beautiful results.

The trailer of ‘Mokuhanga Magic!’ gave a first taste of what such a collaborative process can look like. The video showed how master and pupil Vladimir Ivaneanu and Soetkin Everaert ventured into the craftership of Japanese woodcut and how they worked together from design to print.

Time to dive into methodology, as participatory work with heritage communities requires a thoughtful and sustainable framework. 

Jorijn Neyrinck explained how she, together with Croatian colleague Tamara Nikolic Djeric, started to develop that framework. It all starts with the ‘WHY?’ question: why are you going to film a heritage practice as a means of safeguarding it? This is because the goal or function of your film needs to determine what filming method - or ‘how-to’ - you can adopt and what your working process looks like. These functions have been grouped in the following categories: 

• Identifying and inventorying 
• Presentation and communication, with a focus on:
  • raising awareness 
  • education
• Transmission 
• Research 

Within each of these, participation is a transversal and universal basic approach and principle: the heritage community is at the heart of the process. 

So what does such a participatory film project according to different functions look like? This information was summarised in 6 different toolkits, which Tamara Nikolic Djeric guided us through step by step. Each toolkit contains certain nuances and a specific filming method, linked to the chosen function of the film. For example: different aspects are important when making tutorials than when making a promotional film. 

Shana Van Hauwermeiren (Workshop intangible heritage Flanders) then guided the participants through the toolbox at www.filminglivingheritage.org: an online guide that helps visitors find the right toolkit, full of valuable information, handy tips and tricks, and, of course, the practical examples filmed during the project. Those who like to dive deeper into the literature can also visit this website for more information on the different aspects involved in filming heritage practices. 

How to put methodology into practice? Filmmaker Alexander Kerkhof (Feathers on Wings) explains in a clear video how he went about filming according to the new methodology. He conveys a clear overview, practical details and examples of each type of film, as well as his own experiences within this process. 

Intangible heritage professional Laura Danckaert (CAG) testified about CAG's filming process with farmer-propagators about the craftership of crop selection. This trajectory covered 2 functions: raising awareness, and education. Flexibility was of the essence here, partly because of the seasonality of this type of craftsmanship, but also because the film schedule was subject to changing weather conditions. 

As a final testimonial, Julie Aerts of Parcum gave an insight into how different monastic crafterships were identified and inventoried through observational filmmaking. Good preparation was crucial here, as it involved working with secluded communities. The better your preparation, the more at ease the communities will feel and the smoother the filming itself will go.