The aim of this special issue is the investigation and contextualization of specific arts practices for what they can show us about the transmission and ownership of knowledge. Our authors make explicit the modes of sharing that are part of the creative process in contemporary dance and in Irish traditional music and examine the principles of transmission and social mores that allow ideas to move between practitioners. This introduction sets out some context for the issue and our approach, which is to work alongside practitioners to understand and reveal the social principles and expectations of ownership that are part of the process of producing these art forms.

Recent global interest in preserving cultural identity and heritage for the future of previously colonized Indigenous groups has prompted the resuscitation of local and Indigenous cultures from the brink of extinction. The pertinence of protecting and managing cultural heritage as an endowment that transcends generations of people and serves as a ligature between their past, present, and future cannot be overstated. In this respect, the repatriation or restitution of sacred ceremonial objects (SCOs) and cultural artifacts constitutes an integral aspect of reviving Indigenous people’s cultural and living heritage, which has been eroded by colonialism and other forms of occupation. In Alberta, Canada, the First Nations Sacred Ceremonial Objects Repatriation Act is the foremost legislation that provides a formal mechanism for the return of SCOs to the First Nations. Thus far, it has successfully facilitated the repatriation of several hundred repatriated several SCOs. In contrast, South Africa’s primary heritage legislation, the National Heritage Resources Act, lacks direction and detail on the restitution of SCOs, specifically to cultural communities. With the aid of a comparative approach, this article critically examines one successful approach to the repatriation of specific sets of heritage objects in Canada and analyzes South Africa’s legal frameworks that consider SCOs as a component of its national estate within its framework for restitution and the promotion of cultural revival in cultural communities.

While three-dimensional digital renderings of cultural heritage sites have been developed over the past decades for informational and preservation purposes, the COVID 19 pandemic has demonstrated that the audience for virtual cultural heritage – so-called “technoheritage” – is likely to grow, engaging lay persons and specialist scholars alike through creative renditions and experiences of digital sites. Virtual availability affords democratized access to cultural heritage sites in theory, yet the process of digitizing heritage raises questions of intellectual property rights and how they should be allocated among the various stakeholders, including site stewards and heritage recording organizations. This article untangles these knotty intellectual property issues and posits that the current trend to treat all technoheritage and related data as copyrightable intellectual property is a clunky approach and not legally sound. Understanding the intellectual property in and to technoheritage and addressing intellectual property allocation in the complex manner the law requires are crucial to finding workable solutions that can balance concerns regarding appropriation of cultural heritage with open access to information.

In this article, we reflect on the current socio-political context of the 1972 World Heritage Convention after 50 years rather than its significant achievements and trials throughout its turbulent history. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has already documented and publicized these formative episodes. Instead, we consider the World Heritage milieu today, embedded as it is within a much broader landscape of non-governmental organizations and civil society preservation initiatives than it was five decades ago. Like other United Nations agencies, UNESCO now faces challenges arising from various types of re-spatialization beyond the nation-state that further impact its effectiveness. Those challenges encompass not only the expansive force of globalization but also regionalization and localization, all of which have given rise to a new diplomacy. We discuss the proliferation of competing international agencies and individual donors, then describe the dilemmas facing World Heritage, including the rise of non-state actors and post-conflict remediation in the Middle East, the limited recognition of Indigenous Peoples and their role in decision making, and the persistent failures to remedy the inequitable position of Africa as a priority region.

Drawing on the contributions to this special issue, this article offers a synthetic description of the principles of ownership, sharing, and reward that guide and stimulate the creative practices of contemporary dance. Irish traditional music is also considered. The article aims to contextualize creative practices within a series of concerns around the protection and perpetuation of valuable cultural and artistic practices. This contextualization establishes the relevance and interest of the contemporary dance for other domains and attends to the contemporary conditions of cultural production, including those of intellectual property law, commercialization, and community/commons formation. I show how this work offers an illuminating model of social process in which value created in common is linked – through reputation, attribution, recognition, and innovation – to people, without private property becoming the dominant mode of ownership.

This article considers the fiftieth anniversary of the 1972 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention in light of climate change, offering a state of the field review of climate responses for World Heritage sites (WHS). Opening with a brief review of UNESCO World Heritage activities around climate change, we then detail the primary impacts and risks that climate change pose for WHS and the reporting and monitoring systems in place to document and track these impacts. Looking forward, we examine the most promising pathways for World Heritage to advance in the domains of climate mitigation, adaptation, climate communication, and climate action.

Musical instruments are central components of both the tangible and intangible heritage. However, discourse about music as intangible cultural heritage frequently overlooks the importance of instruments in conserving traditions inherited from the past and making live performance possible in the present, while curating instruments as tangible heritage often neglects their function for making music. This article explores two interrelated research questions about musical instruments as heritage. First, should instrument-crafting skills inherited from the past be sustained today, and, where industrial or mechanized manufacturing processes and the development of instruments is encouraged, what are the implications for sustaining music traditions? Second, given that instruments as crafted objects deteriorate over time, should instruments inherited from the past be displayed as objects, be restored to playing condition, or be updated and developed for contemporary use? To explore these questions, I take three case studies that juxtapose musical instruments from opposite sides of the world and from societies with very different philosophical and ideological approaches. The three case studies are Britain’s piano heritage, traditional Korean instruments (kugakki) in the Republic of Korea/South Korea, and “national” instruments (minjok akki) in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea/North Korea. Based on fieldwork, ethnography, and collecting and curating work, my choice of case studies allows me to look at both the country I call home (Britain) and the region where I have researched matters musical for 40 years (the Korean peninsula). But the case studies also demonstrate that there is no single answer to questions about the role of musical instruments when (and if) instruments are recognized as both tangible and intangible heritage.

Similar to the other forms of cultural heritage, Indigenous oral traditions are collected and held often by outsiders to the community. There are a number of instruments addressing this problem, but none of them provide complete control over such works. This article will focus on the possibility and instances of copyright being used to control oral traditions, both by outsiders and the Indigenous communities. The article will first provide an overview of the applicable legal areas (cultural property law, Indigenous rights, and intellectual property rights), and then it will assess different stages in the treatment of oral traditions. It will discuss the copyright implications for not only the traditions themselves but also their documented versions, subsequent copies, adaptations, and new works in order to provide a full picture of the relationship between control and copyright.

Modern warfare has prompted states to protect collections of cultural property by evacuating them to safe locations at times of war. Building on previously classified documents in archives, inquiries and other sources, this article investigates how planning for such evacuation was carried out in Sweden from 1939 to the 1990s. After the end of the Cold War, existing evacuation plans were finally scrapped. Due to the worsening security situation in the region, Swedish heritage institutions today need to build preparedness anew. It is shown that the evacuation of large volumes of property out of cities for practical reasons never was a realistic scenario, but probably should be restricted to a minimum of carefully selected objects, records and books. The process of selecting, transporting, finding safe locations to take the property to, and determining how to monitor it needs to be carefully planned during peaceful conditions in order to efficiently safeguard the collections in wartime. The relationship between Swedish planning and the 1954 Hague Convention, and how other states can learn from this study, is finally discussed.

This article considers the “commons” in relationship to contemporary dance in the United Kingdom. I highlight the norms and expectations that shape the sharing of dance in this context by outlining four implicit rules that govern circulation and ownership. I go on to highlight how dance’s circulation outside of legal structures is in part due to its ontology through the examination of choreographer and visual artist Florence Peake’s work RITE (2018) and its relationship to choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913).

Fifty years after the ratification of the World Heritage Convention, we have come to learn that there is a huge discrepancy between the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) ideals of protecting heritage sites with outstanding universal values and unmatched realities in situ. I attempt to elucidate what World Heritage ideals of heritage protection are held in iconic sites in Southeast Asia. The studied sites are ancient monumental heritage sites of national importance – namely, Borobudur of Indonesia, Sukhothai and Ayutthaya of Thailand, and Angkor of Cambodia. The authorities in these countries have converted heritage sites into parks for visitors and for capitalization, which has placed authenticity and integrity at stake as well as converting the sites for contestation between the authorities and local communities. In order to solve the dilemma of the World Heritage ideals and their unwanted realities, I explore possible effective approaches for UNESCO and its partners to take into consideration.

This article considers the intersection of gender, traditional cultural expressions, collaborative innovation, and intellectual property in the Tonga Indigenous community of Zambia. Based on a study of the Tonga rural women basket makers who are organized around craft clubs, the study investigated the collaborative environment that fosters the preservation of the cultural tradition of basket weaving, the impact it has had on empowering the women, and the legal protection options available for the Tonga baskets. The study found that Zambia’s 2016 Protection of Traditional Knowledge, Genetic Resources and Expressions of Folklore Act no. 16 (Traditional Knowledge Act) gives automatic protection to traditional cultural expressions and the option for the protection of traditional cultural expressions under the existing intellectual property laws. Though intellectual property protection may not be practical for the Tonga baskets, the Traditional Knowledge Act is a significant step in recognizing the customary values and governance principles in protecting traditional cultural expressions. Registration, in terms of the Traditional Knowledge Act, could enhance the recognition of the baskets, preserve and promote the cultural heritage, and empower the Tonga women.

Scholars suggest that philanthropic activity in Latin America is limited. However, this suggestion overlooks the potential for philanthropists focused on specific localities to significantly influence the places in which they work. In this article, I explore the case of cultural philanthropy in Oaxaca, Mexico to advance our understanding of philanthropy in Latin America by highlighting the work of operating foundations funding locally with little state regulation. In Oaxaca, a small number of philanthropists have transformed the cultural sector by building and managing a proliferation of cultural institutions. They have imbued these institutions with a unique vision for Oaxacan culture, derived from a combination of four philanthropic goals – public access, knowledge production, Western aesthetic value, and efficiency, which have arisen via social and professional networks between philanthropists. Oaxaca’s philanthropists have advanced their vision for Oaxacan culture by critiquing and compelling action by the state’s government, thus solidifying their impact on Oaxaca. This case study shows the importance of a local lens in describing philanthropy in Latin America, highlights the importance of social and professional networks in shaping local philanthropic work, and illuminates the mechanisms by which philanthropists working locally can expand their impact on cultural heritage by compelling state action.

This article examines the relationship between the World Heritage Convention and international human rights law. The first part of the article draws on key phrases in Article 1 of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Constitution, which defines its purpose to elaborate on the role of human rights to UNESCO’s mandate and how developments in international human rights law over the last 75 years have been translated into the organization’s policies and programs and the implementation of the World Heritage Convention. The second part details how human rights violations related to World Heritage properties expose significant shortcomings in UNESCO’s fulfillment of its mandate and states’ compliance with international human rights norms. The third part outlines the international responsibility of various actors in respect of serious violations of human rights related to World Heritage properties. The final part identifies possible areas of reform in the operation of the World Heritage Convention that may facilitate its alignment with international human rights law and UNESCO’s adherence to its mandate.

In this transcript of an extended interview, Dame Siobhan Davies discusses her biography and oeuvre in the context of an enquiry into aspects of learning, transmission, and claims to ownership over the material that makes modern dance. The creative practice of contemporary dance makers offers an opportunity to describe the “coming into being” of both knowledge and persons in a unique domain, but one also connected to other areas of the arts and collaborative practice. Davies describes an approach to making dance that explicitly rejects two key notions: that the body merely performs what the mind creates and, thus, that the choreographer and the dancer are in a hierarchical relationship of control mirroring the control of mind over matter. She then describes how her creative processes with others have been increasingly shaped to allow non-proprietorial and non-hierarchical outcomes that are substantive to the art works themselves.

This article examines the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on a provincial art market to shed light on how gallerists, auctioneers, and antique dealers have coped with this exogenous event. Provincial intermediaries, active in the lower ends of the art market, are characterized by economic properties that differ from those of the upper-end markets. Their location at the periphery of metropolitan centers, combined with the characteristics of supply and demand, are likely to affect their ability to face a global crisis. Based on 15 semi-structured interviews with provincial intermediaries, this research reveals the unexpected performance of local auction houses and antique dealers active in the secondary art market. We attribute this performance to the use value of lowbrow cultural goods, the willingness of local auction houses to embrace the benefits of online two-sided markets, and their ability to offset a pent-up demand, especially among Generation Y. Recommendations to prompt provincial art market players to sustain the positive externalities of the crisis in the long run are provided.

While the illicit trade in Cycladic figurines is a well-known phenomenon, and the escalatory impact of auction sales upon the looting of Cycladic deposits is widely accepted, there has been to date no systematic study of commercial transactions in Cycladic figurines. This study addresses this gap by performing a quantitative market analysis of auction house sales in Cycladic figurines between 2000 and 2019, examining the frequency with which they appear on the market, fluctuations in their price, and the nature of their provenance. In doing so, it sets out a methodology for navigating the ambiguous nature of antiquity market data, which can often give the misleading impression of a reforming market if the latent commercial contexts are not considered. Overall, a comprehensive insight is gained into the present state of the antiquities market in Cycladic figurines. This insight contributes much needed empirical data on the illicit antiquities trade and offers a new interpretative methodology that can be incorporated in future studies that seek to understand the true nature of antiquity market data.

This research responds to the recent destruction of cultural heritage in Nigeria during the protest against police brutality meted out on the populace by a unit of the Nigerian police force known as the Special Anti-Robbery Squad. This article uncovers issues implicated in the destruction of the Iga Idunganran, a national monument. Through a survey questionnaire, the article determines the perceptions of people about African traditional religion and the knowledge of people about the value and significance of heritage loss occasioned by the recent destruction of the palace. Findings reveal that many Nigerians are unaware of the value and significance of the palace as heritage that is essential to societal development. Many Nigerians are suffering from an identity crisis because of colonization. The Nigerian government has not fulfilled its role in protecting cultural heritage. The Nigerian government needs to put structures in place to implement its commitment at the national level.

This article examines Indigenous peoples’ experiences with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) World Heritage Convention against the backdrop of their rights as recognized in the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and reviews the efforts of Indigenous peoples and human rights mechanisms to ensure respect for Indigenous peoples’ rights, cultures, and values in World Heritage sites. Although the Convention’s governing bodies have adopted policy and operational guidelines “encouraging” states parties to respect Indigenous peoples’ rights, many nomination, management, and protection processes of World Heritage sites continue to be marked by an exclusion of Indigenous peoples from decision making, a lack of respect for their relationship to the land, and disregard for their traditional livelihoods and cultural heritage. Human rights violations against Indigenous peoples continue to occur unabated in many sites and are in many ways enabled, and sometimes even driven, by decision making under the Convention. This article argues that there is an unacceptable disconnect between this Convention and the UN human rights system, with significant implications for the Convention’s and UNESCO’s credibility, and that a concerted effort should be made to align this UN Convention with the UNDRIP and the human rights purposes of the UN Charter and the UNESCO Constitution.

This article explores the possibility that dance is a field of expert knowledge that can be studied from the perspective of documents created by dancers and choreographers whose anticipated viewers/readers are mainly other practitioners. These documents include written texts and annotated video recordings created with the aim of sharing processes, techniques and ideas. These documents seek, in a variety of ways, to partially transform experiential knowledge from the tacit/ implicit to the explicit. As such, they suggest a form of trade literature that circulates dance knowledge within its professional network, but with the potential to generate productive exchanges with others outside of this network. By drawing on a number of examples of this trade literature and discussing their methods of circulating dance knowledge, this article makes a link to the theme of this special issue which is dance as a vehicle to discuss and debate ownership and cultural property.