Cultural records
Explore practices by place and field
Use the cultural explorer to find records by country, region and form of practice.
Learning hub
Routes into living heritage
A reading room for educators, researchers and young cultural leaders: start with documented practices, then follow the people, places, rights and responsibilities around them.
Resource index
Begin with a source
Each route opens an existing IOV collection, document or programme. The index states what kind of material you will find before you enter.
- Open the cultural explorer
Exhibition
Visit the digital exhibitionStudy objects and making processes
Enter the digital exhibition for paced, object-led interpretation of folk art and material culture.
Practice guidance
Read the ethics frameworkDocument heritage responsibly
Review principles for consent, attribution, context and the respectful publication of cultural material.
Rights
Read about cultural rightsUnderstand cultural rights
Read how participation, access and community voice shape the safeguarding of living heritage.
Research exchange
Browse conferencesFollow assemblies and conferences
Use IOV meeting records as routes into institutional history, research themes and international exchange.
Learning routes
Start from your setting
The same archive asks different things of a classroom, a research project and a youth exchange. These routes make the first task explicit.
For schools
Begin with one practice, one place and one named community. Compare only after students understand the cultural context of each example.
Choose a cultural record
For researchers
Trace the source, date, place and institutional setting of each record. Contact IOV when a citation or provenance note needs clarification.
Contact the documentation team
For youth groups
Plan interviews and exchanges with the people who carry a practice. Agree how names, images and recordings may be shared before publication.
Visit the Youth Commission
Field method
Document with the community, not only about it
Cultural documentation is a relationship. Before recording a performance, interview, object or practice, agree why the material is being made and how it may be used.
Listen
Let practitioners define the meaning and boundaries of their own cultural knowledge.
Record context
Keep names, places, dates, language and the circumstances in which material was shared.
Confirm consent
Agree what may be photographed, recorded, translated, published or kept private.
Attribute
Credit communities, contributors, photographers and source collections wherever known.