GCRF Resilient Silk Route Cultural Heritage Network

The proposed network speaks to the cities and sustainable infrastructure theme, especially conservation and cultural heritage with the role (mountain) cities and towns play as constellations of knowledge and culture. It will deliver under SDG11 for inclusive, safe and resilient cities on sub-themes 11.3 on inclusive planning and 11.4 on cultural heritage. New transport connectivity driven by China One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative offers new hopes and opportunities to communities in mountainous regions of Central Asia. However, increased connectivity also carries the potential to introduce significant new societal challenges in regard to benefits and their (possibly unequal) distribution, as well as challenges for socio-cultural resilience and the mobilisation and protection of intangible and tangible local cultural heritages. Rapid changes pose threats to the conservation of traditional practices but also opportunities to develop them as resources (such as craft production and tourism sites) and also mobilising and developing them further as heritage assets. All too often, rapid and externally driven development has commodified local cultures, to be packaged for sale - with both control and most economic benefits going to outside developers. This is especially true of mountain, borderland communities whose interests are very often subordinated to state imperatives for territorial control and security. The proposed GCRF network will address such needs and help to preserve the local cultural heritages of formerly isolated mountain towns and, furthermore, keep these cultural heritages alive - as integral aspects of modern societies with clearly articulated pathways of cultural continuity. The network will aim specifically to develop capacities for interventions that focus on empowering (formerly) remote mountain towns and cities, enabling them to maintain greater control over their own cultures, development, and economic benefits.

The network takes this forward in the context of huge infrastructural development in terms of planned transit corridors to ask how this hard infrastructural development intersects with built heritage and the soft infrastructure of intangible heritages and culture. The current level of infrastructural planning largely has been driven at national levels by strategic regional visions, and most often has ignored or inadequately incorporated the needs and wishes of local communities. The resilience of local cultures to the 'shock' of the largescale development and increased connectivity currently affecting and rapidly changing the target region needs enhancing. Current ways of life and socio-cultural practices may be profoundly disrupted by all these changes, even as they bring new opportunities. Current infrastructural developments are introducing many, new economic imperatives, new contacts and new pressures and new demands on fragile socio-ecosystems systems - including encounters with tourists and traders alike, with all the new possibilities to sell products more widely. Immediate gains may be possible, for example through appropriate tourism and craft production opportunities, but these must be situated in the context of socio-cultural viability and global markets for products.

Method:
The network will use the model of Laajverd 'Visiting School' program that uses a Creative Participatory Mediation framework. The visiting school is a task based, challenge led process of actors learning from locals and each other across backgrounds and interests. It was successfully used as a scoping activity in Gilgit, Baltistan, in 2017 and 2018 to identify core problem areas around the development of China Pakistan Economic Corridor. Previous work opened the possibility for construction of a Heritage Museum based on local passions for polo in Harchin Village, Laspur Valley in Upper Chitral, garnering the support of Swiss Development Corporation (SDC) and Aga Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP). The program brought together different actors such as academics, local community elders and young people, women, local business men, crafts persons, tour operators, cultural development organisation representatives, Government District Management Group representatives and journalists. The interdisciplinary nature of the LVS activity encouraged dialogue between natural hazard scientists and geologists, cultural geographers, anthropologists, business entrepreneurs, tourism sector representatives, textile and product designers, architects, local crafts persons, etc. The Visiting School consists of a 7-day programme of activities that encourages knowledge sharing around opportunities, problems and local concerns that are identified by the local communities and their partners.

Activities:
The project will run three 'visiting schools' in three countries in the first phase of work: in Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (Tajikistan), in Pamir-Alay (Kyrgyzstan), and in Gilgit-Baltistan (Pakistan). The network launch meeting is planned in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Outcomes:
They will lead to documentation of vernacular and intangible heritages. This will create Audio-Textual-Visual materials. We will seek the widest and quickest access via creating a web site amplified via social media feeds. Given lack of local access we will synthesise these into an exhibition booklet that will also be able to 'travel' beyond exhibition sites. This will be supported by a short 3 minute film - a format decided to attract the most interest. The exhibition events planned for Bishkek, Islamabad and Durham.

Separately policy impact will be created through networking events, leveraging from interest created by the exhibition and drawing on network partners with contacts with key local cultural, development and policy organisations to incorporate the cultural heritage management tools developed. Partners bring access to many local initiatives and stakeholders. Via the Aga Khan Foundation we can access development initiatives such as the Mountain Societies Development Support Programme working to diversify income streams in poor households to manage uncertainty more successfully and thus seeks to enhance skills of actors in tourism and handicrafts and the Tourism Promotion Initiative. Via Didar Ali, who is a local Gojali researcher who has been working to preserve Wakhi language, music and cuisine, we can approach the Gulmit Educational and Social Welfare Society (GESWS). From there we have a range of regional actors to approach to adopt the cultural heritage management tools such as: the Mountain Partnership (MP), that brings in local state actors and NGOs, hosted at UCA since 2011; the KADO (Karakoram Area Development Network) for socio-economic development through culture and crafts; PECTA - (the Pamirs Eco-Cultural Tourism Associations) which helps local tourism companies; De Pamiri Handicraft promoting local craftsmanship; ICIMOD and 'Bam-e-Duniya Network' for integrated landscape management in the Pamir region; local members of ICCA Consortium - Indigenous and Community Conserved Areas.