Blue Shield International is pleased to announce its patronage of the international research project
Sustaining Intangible Cultural Practices in Contexts of Forced Displacement: Foundations for Research, Policy, and Practice
World Universities Network “Research Development Fund” project.
Project Leader: A/Prof Catherine Grant, Griffith University, Australia
As 2025 began, over 123 million people were forcibly displaced globally—a figure that has risen each year since 2015, and that risks growing further amid intersecting global geopolitical and environmental crises.
Cultural losses incurred through displacement exacerbate the challenges of those processes for individuals and communities, and impede international efforts to urgently safeguard at-risk intangible cultural practices.
For people experiencing forced displacement, intangible cultural practices of the homeland can powerfully promote psychosocial wellbeing and social connection, due to their strong links with cultural identity and collective memory. The world over, however, displaced people encounter major impediments to sustaining and transmitting their intangible cultural practices.
Across UNESCO’s five domains of intangible culture—oral traditions and expressions; performing arts; traditional crafts; social practices, rituals and festive events; and knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe—this project convenes a transdisciplinary consortium of academic and civil sector partners, and people with lived experience of forced displacement, to provide urgently needed expertise on how intangible cultural practices can be supported and sustained in contexts of forced displacement.
Sustaining Intangible Cultural Practices in Contexts of Forced Displacement: Foundations for Research, Policy, and Practice aims to:
- ascertain key challenges in practising, transmitting, protecting, and maintaining intangible cultural practices through experiences of forced displacement and resettlement, and possible solutions;
- identify potential roles for host societies, governments, civil sector organisations, and international cultural and refugee agencies in valuing and supporting those cultural practices and their human bearers;
- develop and disseminate a suite of resources to inform policy and research directions and applied strategies supporting cultural sustainability in situations where people are displaced.
Overall, the project seeks to advance global efforts to achieve prosperous, equitable social and cultural futures for displaced people and their host societies (UN SDG10, Reduced Inequalities).
