Seeking tangible benefits from linking culture, development and intellectual property.

Culture is a tool for development as well as part of the process of development. Taking this proposition as its starting point, WIPO’s Creative Heritage Project provides practical training to local communities and museums and archives in developing countries on recording, digitizing and disseminating their creative cultural expressions and in managing IP issues. In partnership with the American Folklife Center/Library of Congress and the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, WIPO ran a pilot training programme for the Maasai community of Laikipia, Kenya and the National Museums of Kenya in September 2008. The intensive, hands-on curriculum included project planning, research ethics, photography, sound and audio-visual recording techniques, digital archiving methods and database and website development. In cooperation with the US Copyright Office, WIPO staff provided the IP component of the training. WIPO will purchase a basic kit of recording equipment and knowledge management software for the community, help the community and museum to develop their own IP protocols, continue to foster a mutually beneficial working relationship between the community and the museum and further develop links established between the community, the museum and the national IP offices in Kenya. Lying at the interface between the safeguarding of living heritage and its legal protection, the programme seeks to advance a range of valuable policy goals - promoting cultural diversity, fostering economic development, using culture as a communications tool in development, bridging the ‘digital divide’, promoting responsible tourism and creating local cultural content. Early results from evaluation of the pilot are encouraging, and WIPO and its partners have received several requests from other communities and museums and archives to participate in such a programme. However, something so ambitious presents many challenges and it remains an unpredictable cultural and legal experiment. This article will describe how and why the programme was conceived, its various objectives, the challenges, expected results and lessons learned so far.