“Playing board games” in the nationwide UNESCO directory of intangible cultural heritage
The German Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the States and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media yesterday confirmed the inclusion of 18 living traditions in the UNESCO Federal Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage – including “playing board games”. The inclusion is based on a list of proposals from the Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder and after examination, evaluation and recommendation by the independent expert committee for intangible cultural heritage, which is based at the German Commission for UNESCO.
Claudia Roth, the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, emphasizes: “The new additions to the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage reflect cultural diversity and regional characteristics. I am pleased that ‘board game culture’ has been included in the list; it connects generations and promotes cohesion.”
The Game Designers Association (SAZ) welcomes the inclusion of analog board game culture in the directory of intangible cultural heritage. This underlines the necessity of collecting and preserving analog games, like other media, in the German National Library or in a federally funded game archive, and of making them available for research and for the general public. The database of this archive would then be the basis for the comprehensive distribution of the library royalty for analog games by VG WORT. This would finally realize the legal claim of game authors and publishers to the library royalty according to § 27 UrhG and achieve equal treatment with the authors of other media works. We hope that the 21st German Bundestag will lay the foundations for this.
Link to press release „Immaterielles Kulturerbe in Deutschland: Verzeichnis wächst“
Link to UNESCO „Immaterielles Kulturerbe – Brettspiele spielen“