UNESCO recognizes kobzar-lirnyk tradition as vital cultural heritage of Ukraine

Photo: Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications

Alvina Kaminska

At its 19th session, the UNESCO Intergovernmental Committee, currently being held in Paraguay's capital, Asuncion, officially added the Ukrainian "Program for the Protection of the Kobzar-Lyrnik Tradition" to the Register of Good Practices for the Protection of Intangible Cultural Heritage.

The Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications reported this.

The Minister of Culture and Strategic Communications of Ukraine, Mykola Tochytskyi, emphasized that this success testifies to the international recognition of Ukrainian identity and cultural values.

"This is an affirmation of our shared values, culture, and identities. The Kobzar guilds in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Lviv have shown that preserving a living tradition relies on those who uphold it. It is alive when some carry it on," the official said.

Unfortunately, the war unleashed by Russia is causing significant damage to Ukrainian culture and is also taking the lives of artists. According to the minister, 133 Ukrainian artists have died since the beginning of the war, including six members of the Kobzar guilds who defended Ukraine with weapons in their hands.

^{Photo: Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications}

"Nowadays, Russia, like the imperial and Stalinist regimes once, is destroying everything related to Ukrainian culture, in particular kobzarism and the bearers of living heritage. But despite all attempts to deprive Ukrainians of their roots, our culture demonstrates invincibility," Tochytskyi noted.

The ministry reports that painstaking work on the program began in 2022 when the kobzar-lirnyk tradition was included in the National List of Elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine.

^{Photo: Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications}In 2023, at the initiative of the Kobzar Art Guilds of Kyiv, Lviv, and Kharkiv, the "See Ukrainian!" Association, the NGO "Democracy through Culture" Development Center," with the support of the "MHP – Gromadi" Charitable Foundation and the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine, Ukraine, submitted the "Kobzar-Lyrny Tradition" and a program for its protection to be included in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.

^{Photo: Ministry of Culture and Strategic Communications}

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Also, UNESCO recently recognized the Ukrainian art of Easter egg painting as a cultural heritage of humanity and included it in the list of intangible heritage objects.

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