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Opening of the Second International Crafts Festival

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RA Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports Zhanna Andreasyan took part in the opening of the second International Crafts Festival in Dilijan, which was held by the Folk Arts Museum after Hovhannes Sharambeyan on July 20-21 with the support of the Ministry.

The minister got acquainted with the handicrafts made by Armenian and international masters. Welcoming the participants and guests of the festival, Zhanna Andreasyan emphasized that folk crafts and art are important values of our identity and culture, the preservation and development of which is an issue of the day.

” I am sure that with the help of such festivals, we can make visible folk crafts, which are an integral part of our culture, and through which we can see an important layer of both values and work. It’s also about reinventing our traditions, which is also very important. Handicrafts are first of all work, and we encourage work, education and importance for folk crafts to continue. Moreover, in the modern world, they take interesting forms, becoming truly a work of art” said Zhanna Andreasyan and thanked all the masters participating in the festival for their cooperation and invaluable work.

Zhanna Andreasyan informed that the next Crafts Festival will be held this fall in Vayots Dzor region. The minister happily stated that the participation of international masters in the festival held in our country is gradually increasing. In particular, representatives from Serbia, Bulgaria, Iran, Georgia and other countries are participating in the festival this year.

Zhanna Andreasyan also thanked the administration of the Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Arts for the important activity and emphasized the importance of the early reopening of the museum’s Dilijan branch. As part of the visit to Dilijan, Minister Zhanna Andreasyan also visited the Dilijan branch of the museum, where renovation works are being carried out with state funding. Zhanna Andreasyan got acquainted with the progress of the works, which are in the final stage.

Lusine Toroyan, director of Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Arts, expressed her hope that the International Crafts Festival will become a popular event for artists from the region as well as from all over the world.

Within the framework of the festival, various samples of crafts and arts were presented in the city park of Dilijan: embroidery, unique works made of wood and metal, carpets, jewelry, dolls, pottery, etc.

About 40 craftsmen from Armenia and abroad participated in the festival, displaying their handicrafts. Zhanna Andreasyan also emphasized the participation of Gyumri blacksmiths in the festival, taking into account the fact that Gyumri’s blacksmithing tradition was included in the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

The first International Crafts Festival was held in 2022 in Gyumri.

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Blacksmithing master classes in Lebanon

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May 11-23, on the initiative of Haykazyan University and with the participation of the Museum of Folk Arts, 15 Armenian schools in Lebanon (Beirut, Antilias, Anchar) held master classes in Armenian blacksmithing.
The program was held with the participation of Gayane Aslanyan, Deputy Director of Museum Development, and Gyumri blacksmith Hovhannes Mnoyan.
For the 3rd year, the Museum of Folk Arts has been conducting folk crafts master classes for the students of the Armenian schools of Beirut, at the invitation of Haykazian University of Beirut, represented by Andranik Dakesyan, director of the University’s Armenian Diaspora Study Center.
The master classes, implemented in cooperation between the Museum of Folk Arts and Haykazian University of Beirut, are held within the museum’s “Identity Lab” school.
Let’s remind that “Tradition of blacksmithing in Gyumri” was registered in the list of intangible cultural heritage of UNESCO in 2023.

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“The Birth of Crafts”: animation films

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Supported by the RA Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, the presentation of the program “The Birth of Crafts” was held at Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Art.
ESCS Minister Zhanna Andreasyan and Deputy Minister Alfred Kocharyan attended the event.
As part of the project, 6 short animation films were created, which depict the crafts used in Armenia from ancient times to the present day: rug and carpet weaving, embroidery and lace making, felting, pottery, blacksmithing, and woodworking.
ESCS Minister Zhanna Andreasyan thanked the participating structures, groups and individuals for the outstanding effort: “Work is successful when a healthy creative environment is provided in which everyone is concerned about a good outcome. The result of this project requires the field to remain consistently in the spotlight, disseminating knowledge about folk art on both international platforms and among the general public. The program can also serve as an outstanding educational resource for schools. This will enhance the visibility and comprehension of textbook knowledge for our children. I would like to express my special gratitude to our folk artists, whose work we must make visible. I am glad that thanks to the successful collaboration with the museum, their work is gaining value and significance.”
Zhanna Andreasyan emphasized that the Ministry is willing to promote concepts meant to disseminate and popularize the national.
The film series is dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage and is represented under the UNESCO logo.
Specialists of the “Invisible Friends” animation studio from different countries worked on creating bilingual films in Armenian and English: Armenia, Russia, Georgia, Israel, and France.
When producing the visual content for the films, both the collections of Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Art and the History Museum of Armenia, along with the personal archives of individual masters were used.
As part of the event, the ceremony of cutting a carpet of the Khndzoresk type dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the Museum was also held. It was weaved by Margarita Khachyan, forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh, who has been working at the Museum of Folk Art since 2023. The newly created museum choir “Manel” also performed at the event.
Accompanied by Museum Director Lusine Toroyan, Minister Zhanna Andreasyan toured the museum and got acquainted with the main exhibits, temporary exhibitions and educational programs.

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Musical instrument “Kanun”

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It has been known in Armenian culture since the Middle Ages. There are evidences of its prototypes in the works of Hovhannes Draskhanakerts (10th century) and Hakob Ghrimets, Tamburi Harutyun (18th century), in medieval miniatures, as well as tombstones from the 16th-18th centuries. Both solo musicians and orchestras of brass, string and floor instruments are depicted here. Art critic Garegin Levonyan, canonist composer Khachatur Avetisyan and others referred to the canon. It was played by the troupes, sazandar ensembles and folk instrument orchestras.
Kanon belongs to the family of multi-stringed, reedless, and smith instruments. The body of the theater is like a table-shaped, flat box, the left side of which has an oblique cut, and the right side has a vertical cut. 2/3 ofsurface is made of wood, and 1/3 is made of film. There are three resonant sound holes on the wooden part of the deka. The wires are stretched across the entire surface of the deck in a horizontal position, pass over the wooden cross extending from top to bottom of the membrane and are tied to the vertical side of the right side. On the left side of the table-shaped body, the ears for pulling the wires and the metal knobs for adjusting the volume are fixed. It has a volume of three and a half octaves. The tense is diatonic. It is tuned with a metal key. Each sound is produced by a three-stringed bundle. They play in a sitting position, placing on their knees, using thimbles and sticks attached to their index fingers. The kanun has wide technical and performance capabilities, thanks to which folk, classical and modern melodies of various genres and complexity can be played. Kanun is a solo and ensemble instrument. The tremolo, chords, arpeggios and glissando sound unique when performed by Kanun. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was mostly played by men in Armenia, and in our times, mostly by women. Many examples are stored in the National Museum of Armenian Ethnography and the History of the Liberation Struggle, and the Yeghishe Charents Literature and Art Museum.
The tradition of making and performing the kanun has gradually developed in Armenia and has grown from a folk professional to a professional art. There are kanun classes in all music schools and educational institutions of the country, in Yerevan Komitas State Conservatory and at the Armenian State Pedagogical University named after Kh. Abovyan. Apart from folk songs and music, nowadays Armenian composers create special plays and concerts for the kanun. The composer Khachatur Avetisyan was the founder of the kanun performance school in Soviet Armenia. He transformed and developed the structural, performance and teaching traditions of the rule. Thanks to the composer and his students, the kanun performance school formed in Eastern Armenia significantly differed from the traditions spread in the Eastern countries. Today’s instrument-making masters (Hakob Yeritsyan, Shahen Yeritsyan, Albert Zakaryan and others) also created updated and improved versions of the large, medium and small-sized instruments.

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Barekendan

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Barekendan (Armenian Carnival) is a folk holiday that is movable due to Easter. The duration is two weeks. The second week is called Bun Barekendan. The holiday is characterized by communal song and dance, feasts, games and entertainment, masked performances, turning upside down of traditional regulated household customs (including strict monastic customs – the ritual of Abeghatogh), diverse and delicious food, etc. Being mobile, the holiday took place in February or early March and was associated with the arrival of spring. The amusements had the advice of cheerfully welcoming the awakening nature, and people wished each other a good life. The performances were carnival-like, with masks, the roles were imitations of real life and real people. The performances are grouped around themes representing domestic, historical, ethno-cultural, love and value systems.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, Barekendan was one of the most popular Armenian holidays, which was accompanied by masked performances, games, and dances. It was discontinued at the beginning of the 20th century, had a lot in common with the masquerades of European and Slavic peoples. The crazy speed of the economic, political, social and cultural life of that period, the new cultural, aesthetic and social demands of the people, the accessibility of the media field, certainly affect the changes in the course, form and content of the holiday, which is experiencing new developments both in terms of revival and scope and in the sense of new manifestations (see H. Kharatyan-Arakelyan, Armenian folk holidays, Yerevan, 2005, p. 76-95).

The carnival holiday can have a positive effect on the relationships of communities, different groups of society, individuals, friendship, rapprochement, and the formation of respect.

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Tradition of blacksmithing in Gyumri

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Inscribed in 2023 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Blacksmithing, or the creation and repair of iron objects, has played a central role in the local identity and cultural characteristics of the city of Gyumri, Armenia for centuries. Although the practice nearly disappeared in Armenia in the mid-twentieth century, it has survived in Gyumri, where inhabitants continue to preserve existing items – such as window lattices, fences, gates, doors, candlesticks and chandeliers – made by old masters and to forge and use the iron products in their daily life. Current blacksmiths, some of which are fifth- or sixth-generation masters, play an active role in safeguarding and transmitting the tradition of urban blacksmithing as well as its history, traditional skills and knowledge. They typically transmit the practice informally within their families, passing on the skills and styles to their children and grandchildren. In addition, blacksmithing is also transmitted formally through community museums and in two specialized educational institutions: the Gyumri Fine Arts Academy and the Gyumri Craftsmanship College N 1. A key part of the city of Gyumri’s architectural identity, blacksmithing can be seen both in the interior and exterior of private and public buildings and is associated with the values of diligence, honesty, fair work and mutual respect.

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“Tarehats” – Traditional Armenian New Year Bread

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Tarehats is widespread in individual families, especially among Eastern Armenians.
The first mentions were found in the second half of the 19th century (E. Shahaziz, E. Lalayan, A. Aharonyan, Kajberuni).
It is an integral element of the folk-festive, symbolic complex. Knowledge and training skills are inherited. It is round or oval with a diameter of approximately 30-40 cm. In a number of regions of Armenia it was known under other names: krken, krkeni, dovlat krkeni, mijink, etc. The bread is cut on New Year’s Eve and distributed to members of the house. Decorations are symbolically associated with the ideas of cosmogenesis, creation and generation, etc. A “mijink” – a bean, a pea, a small grain or a coin – was placed in the Tarehats in order to predict the luck of the lucky person for the year. Tarehats was slaughtered according
to the number of all members of the household. In other places it was sometimes divided into 12 parts according to the number of months.

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Preservation of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Armenia and the “Identity Lab” of Folk Art Museum

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An article dedicated to the Hovhannes Sharambeyan Museum of Folk Art and its educational program “Identity Lab” was published in the “Living Heritage” journal, dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage https://www.unesco-centerbg.org/wp-new/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/LivingHeritage_pt6_BODY.pdf?fbclid=IwAR3CzUsmHKk3tTzk3gZyaeUsWVocZfBfuretanxHDB8Vn2owIdyLY-rFJjA , Nazeli Utujyan, “Living Heritage and the Folk Art Museum of Armenia,” p. 65).

The museum, as part of its educational program “Identity Lab”, with the support of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of Armenia, implemented an inclusive educational program also in 2023, which provides free courses on folk art for a number of vulnerable groups of the population. The program has been implemented since 2021.
This year the program was implemented for 88 beneficiaries, including war veterans, children who are members of the families of those killed or missing during the war, children and women from socially vulnerable families, beneficiaries of Support Centers for Children and the Elderly, and a group home for people with disabilities, for children with special needs.
As part of the educational program, courses were held in Shadow Theater, woodworking, carpet weaving, embroidery, and felting.
This year, shadow theater courses were included in the program, given that it is included in the list of intangible cultural heritage assets in need of immediate protection in the Republic of Armenia. The museum collaborated with the “Ayrogi” shadow theater. Among the participants were people with disabilities, displaced people from Artsakh, people who participated in the war, as well as students and graduates of the Yerevan State Institute of Theater and Cinematography. Participants were able to combine traditional and innovative approaches. The best graduates of the course presented their performances at the “Third National Shadow Theater Festival” and won awards in the categories “Best performance of traditional craft”, “Best direction”, “Best script”, “Best cast”.
This year, for the first time, the program included people with disabilities from the Arinj branch of the “Warm Corner” group home, who became acquainted with felting, which is also included in the list of intangible cultural heritage values of the Republic of Armenia that need immediate protection.
This time, within the framework of the project, 8 specialists in the field of folk art were provided with work. The program allowed almost 90 of its beneficiaries to get acquainted with folk art, act as creators, and communicate with art to alleviate difficult psychological, physical or social conditions.

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Ayntap Needlework

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Armenians in Ayntap were engaged in crafts, trade, metalworking, jewelry, and stonework. Weaving was an old and widespread craft, making woven fabrics. Ayntap was famous for woolen fabrics and belt making. Carpentry had reached the height of art. The city was particularly notable for its embroidery and lace-making, which bears the city’s name. Flower-decorated table cloths, covers, pillowcases, handkerchiefs, sewing laces, which were used to decorate headscarves and clothes, were embroidered in Ayntap.
Pictured: Tutu embroidering with her daughters, 1940s, Aleppo (from right: Lousin Adamian, Tutu, Piatris Adamian). Photo: Property of Piatris Adamian, Aleppo.

Arar

“Arar: Safeguarding, Dissemination, Development, and Popularization program of National Culture in the Regions of the Republic of Armenia”

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Arar

“Arar: Safeguarding, Dissemination, Development, and Popularization program of National Culture in the Regions of the Republic of Armenia” carried out by “Arar” Center for Safeguarding Armenian National Art” NGO. This is one of the best examples of public-private cooperation.
“Arar” was created and operates according to the idea and initiative of the Honored Artist of the Republic of Armenia Arsen Grigoryan with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Armenia and in cooperation with the Museum of Folk Arts named after Hovhannes Sharambeyan. It was launched in 2017. The main function is to ensure the viability of folk art by transmitting the experience to young people.
Armenia has a rich intangible cultural heritage and, through bearers of this heritage (individuals and groups), it is possible to safeguard it, contribute to its dissemination, popularization, and transmission, introducing it into the daily lives of children, adolescents and youth. For the effective implementation of the program, observations were carried out in different communities of Armenia. As a result, it was revealed that cultural traditions, awareness of them and the transmission to the future generations are poorly developed in communities. On the basis of the data extracted as a result of this study “Arar” centres were created in different communities. The ideology of the program is to create equal conditions and make national cultural education accessible to beneficiaries of different strata of the society.
The courses, as well as the necessary materials, are free at the centres. Currently the “Arar” centres operate in 40 communities of 8 regions. 18 local folk art specialists teach traditional songs and dances, rug weaving, carpet weaving, lace making, embroidery, ceramics, woodworking, stone carving, khachkar (cross-stone) making, miniature painting. Currently about 900 children and teenagers are involved in the courses.
The courses in the communities form an atmosphere of respect for intangible forms of national culture, stimulate their natural development and encourage the creation of a common cultural platform. Today the bearers of folk art living in the communities are already well-aware that they have been entrusted with the important process of transmitting the intangible cultural heritage protected and preserved by the state, which is inviolable national wealth.
Handmade wooden decorated ladles, spoons, boxes, embroidered tablecloths, blankets, pillows, rugs, belts, bags, jewelry made by students who have mastered the skills of folk crafts and art return to everyday life. The khachkars created by them are installed in the courtyard of churches of the communities and other monumental territories. Workshops of the “Arar” centres in the open air form the cultural side in communities, contribute to the development of rural tourism.
The safeguarding of intangible cultural values and the participation of the society in the process of reproduction in a new way are noticeable and tangible today in those communities where the “Arar” centres operate. The impact of the program is also reflected in the competition between rural communities (which community is the richest in folk traditions, and how actively it uses these traditions). This, in its turn, being a universal means of assimilating intangible culture, ensures the transmission of knowledge from the knowledgeable to the unknowledgeable, from the elder to the younger and its preservation.
Thanks to “Arar” ensuring the realization, preservation and use of the values of intangible cultural heritage is noticeable owing to the results of the beneficiaries shown in the various exhibitions,
cultural events, as well as pan-Armenian and international competitions-festivals.
Students of the programs repeatedly participate in various events and festivals in Armenia and abroad, receiving appreciation and awards.
A very important fact is also UNESCO’s attention towards the work carried out by “Arar”.
The work done by the students of “Arar” during the implementation of the program was presented in detail in the 2021 issue of the UNESCO periodical “Living Heritage”, which touches upon the Armenian intangible cultural heritage.
The courses of woodworking of “Arar” program are also described in detail within the framework of the event “Days of Armenia” of the project “Days of Intangible Cultural Heritage”, presented in UNESCO Regional Centre Sofia.
Three videos about the program were presented at the “International Youth Competition of Social Film and Social Advertising” in Belarus in the “Heritage” nomination and were awarded two first and one second rank prizes. During the program also the exchange of experience of the best specialists in the field with young and beginner specialists from rural areas is provided. Apprentices who have reached the age of 18 also gain teaching experience in the junior group as assistants to the master. “Arar” centres are also created for the best participants in their community. The program also creates an opportunity for beneficiaries to establish their own small business in the field of handmade art after completing the course and gives an opportunity to become an important part in the development of the social life of their region.
The best way to respond to the challenges of cultural globalization is to create a sustainable model for ensuring the viability of intangible cultural heritage through formal and non-formal education in the local environment.
Thus, it can be concluded that the safeguarding, dissemination and development of intangible cultural heritage in communities should be carried out through the implementation of large-scale and long-term projects. In this case, it is necessary to emphasize the involvement of local bearers, which greatly facilitates the active participation of the community and ensures the continuity of the project. Thanks to the experience presented in the article,
it is possible to form a common cultural field in communities: favorable conditions are being created for the recognition of intangible cultural heritage, the importance of its place and role in the life of the communities, and everyone realizes that he/she is the inheritor, keeper and developer of his/her own culture.
The reasonable use of the skills and abilities acquired as a result of suchlike courses creates an opportunity for community residents to brand their settlement, achieve sustainable development and improve the quality of life.