Rich heritage

摘要

Millau's leather and glove manufacturers are at the heart of an ongoing effort to win UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status. The aim of the team behind this ambitious project is to celebrate and preserve the centuries of skill-sharing and traditions that have gone into making Millau a world-renowned centre of gloving excellence, with spin-off socio-economic benefits for partners in France and overseas. The leather and glove industry in and around Millau, in the French department of Aveyron, is moving forward with an ambitious bid to gain formal inclusion on the Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established in 2008. From the beginning, this programme set out to give recognition to the enormous range of arts, oral traditions, crafts, festivals, skills, knowledge and practices that comprise the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. A United Nations convention in 2003 called for the lists to be drawn up with a view to ensuring respect for the cultural heritage of communities, groups and individuals around the world, and to raise awareness locally, nationally and internationally of the importance of a community's intangible cultural heritage.