Building Culture, Building Resilience, Building Capacity: Preserving Rural and Cultural Ways of Knowing

Asking “How do resilient communities build culture?” this project will improve our understanding of how libraries, communities, and citizens can pursue resilience through co-creation of cultural continuity and identity. This two-year qualitative study explores how four international enterprises defied the odds to build resilience in their remote and/or rural communities through intangible cultural heritage (ICH) projects. Using interviews, environmental scanning and visual methods, I want to understand how champions and residents uncovered and mobilized the resources within their own communities to create unique ICH programming based on local lived experiences, how efforts resulted in sustainable and measurably positive outcomes for the community and participants, and how libraries and information professions can participate in, facilitate, enhance and promote the process.