French Center for Intangible Cultural Heritage - World Cultures Institute

The CFPCI is a place of information, documentation, training, reflection, recovery, education and transmission, dedicated to the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and cultural diversity. Located on the territory of the Marches of Brittany, it fulfills its task of organizing and cultural education, with local and regional partners. From the historical activity of the documentation center of the World Cultures Institute, it developed a research, expertise and network nationally, with an international dimension, around the implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of intangible Cultural Heritage.

In consultation with the Department of research management and science policy (DPRPS) Directorate General of Heritage (Ministry of Culture and Communication), which coordinates in France the implementation of the UNESCO Convention the CFPCI has set tasks :
- To publicize the Convention and educate audiences on the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in all its diversity ;
- Document the PCI and encourage the dissemination of existing resources ;
- Contribute to the production of knowledge on PCI, critical reflection on the PCI policies and their effects;
- Develop and facilitate networks of actors at different levels of PCI to encourage the sharing of experiences and dissemination of "best practice" backup ;
- Inform and guide holders projects, including the inventory of ICH in France and nominations for the list of UNESCO, in close collaboration with the Committee for DPRPS and ethnological heritage and intangible ;
- Participate in the monitoring of French elements included on these lists, in close collaboration with the DPRPS and the French association of elements inscribed on the lists of PCI UNESCO .

In 2004, the World Cultures Institute opened its resource center in the north wing of a former Benedictine priory, restored and made ​​available by the City of Vitre, Ille-et-Vilaine, to collect and enhance its archives and collections of objects, through the database online Ibn Battuta, a program of exhibitions, residencies, conferences, educational courses to public school.
The center organized in January 2008, the third meeting of the subsidiary body appointed by UNESCO to assess the terms of community participation in the implementation of the Convention, and in April 2009 a meeting of experts UNESCO on the question of PCI and foodways.
In 2011, under the Convention, ratified by France in 2006, the Ministry of Culture and Communication has designated center "competent body for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage" present in its territory (Article 13b). It then became French Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage.

World Cultures Institute has been involved, through Chérif Khaznadar, founder and director from 1982 to 2007, in various stages of preparation of the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Since its adoption in 2003, Chérif Khaznadar has repeatedly led the French delegation to the meetings of the Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of ICH. He chaired the Subsidiary Body of the pre-selection of the emblem of the Convention (2007-2008) and was elected President of the Second General Assembly of States Parties to the Convention (2008-2010) .
World Cultures Institute is accredited as an NGO with consultative functions of the Intergovernmental Committee since 2010 and was a member of the consultative body of the Committee from 2010 to 2013.
She took part in MEDLIHER (Mediterranean Living Heritage) program launched by UNESCO with the support of the European Union (Euromed Heritage) to facilitate the implementation of the Convention in the countries of the Mediterranean, 2009-2012 .

Since its founding in Paris in 1982, World Cultures Institute is committed to the defense of cultural diversity and actively contributes to enrich the knowledge of many forms of intangible cultural heritage through its program of shows, conferences and publications, thus claiming to be the first place of collective thinking in this area in the country.
Annual event since 1997, the Festival de l'Imaginaire invites each spring in Paris and the regions of the great masters in the fields of music , dance , theater and ritual performances as well as their young disciples. House has hosted more than thirty forms of expression that are now included in the lists of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO.
The festival is also a space for reflection, through hosting screenings, lectures and roundtables. Organised annually since 2003, in partnership with the Ministry of Culture and the French Commission for UNESCO, Day PCI is a tool for dissemination of the Convention among the public and a forum for debate between experts and practitioners French or foreign .
World Cultures Institute extends its programming and deepens its reflection through a publishing business. His label INEDIT discs since 1982 is dedicated to the music of scholarly or popular, rare or endangered tradition, contributing to the preservation and dissemination of music among the least common. International Review of the Imagination, co-edited with Actes Sud in Babel collection offers an area of ​​confrontation and debate. Each issue brings together around a theme contributions from researchers, institutions, practitioners and artists. Since 2008, the series focuses on the issues raised by the notion of intangible cultural heritage, devoting several numbers.