1. If you missed the Macmillan Global Teachers’ Festival the other day, they’ve been quick to put recordings of all the sessions up on their YouTube channel. Well worth a browse! https://www.youtube.com/@Macmillanenglish/videos

2. (This is a long one.) The 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) https://ich.unesco.org/en/convention defines ICH as a phenomenon that is:

a) transmitted from generation to generation;

b) constitutes an important aspect of a community’s identity.

There are five categories: crafts, oral traditions, performance arts, rituals or social customs, and “knowledge and practices concerning nature and the universe”, which between them include carnivals, alphabets, equestrian games; traditions of boatbuilding, polyphonic song, systems of irrigation, navigation, divination, conflict remediation and much more besides.

Dive into intangible cultural heritage! is the headline on UNESCO’s interactive database of ICH from around the world https://ich.unesco.org/en/dive The interactive bit I find a little confusing, so the best way in – for me at least – is via the listings page https://ich.unesco.org/en/lists where you can either search by country or topic or simply scroll down the list of what UNESCO calls ‘elements’, which begins with the most recently added. Here’s the most recent ten, each illustrated with a video

Paraguay: making the ‘Poncho Para’i de 60 Listas’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7FWSJj7xGo

Mozambique: the Mapiko dance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHXaansUs3c

Malaysia: the Mek Mulung performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feuU9uD94HQ

Türkiye: traditional olive cultivation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feuU9uD94HQ

Syrian Arab Republic: traditional glassblowing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXhgUdElNXY

Djibouti: the ‘xeedho’ wedding gift https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkDu0o_fQ5o

Philippines: Aklan piña weaving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tnyh9sN7bI

Lebanon: the Al-Man’ouché breakfast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgp4VJ3UF-g

Switzerland: the Alpine pasture season https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wS8gaH1kgw

Turkmenistan: breeding Akhal-Teke horses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlmE_ZCN3Xo

Today, there are examples of ICH from one hundred and forty-five countries in the database. No UK yet, though, nor USA …

3. I stumbled over this the other day, History Works, full of (hi)stories about Cambridge, most with learning materials http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/history-stories/ PowerPoint and PDF versions of ‘Life in a Victorian School’ below by way of example http://www.creatingmycambridge.com/history-stories/victorian-schools/

[file x 2]

4. And, finally, a short film from 1952 about William Faulkner and his Mississippi hometown, Oxford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1tQ-wt-eas