Intangible Cultural Heritage Days 2025 - Textile arts

The Journées du patrimoine culturel immatériel (JPCI - Intangible Cultural Heritage Days) celebrate living cultural practices handed down from generation to generation and classified by UNESCO, in connection with Inalco's cultural areas. For its third edition, Inalco will be honoring the textile arts and their know-how through a series of round tables, evening events and fun workshops, where academics and the general public alike will be able to get to grips with the issues involved in the heritage of the textile arts.
Fabric patchwork
Patchwork © AI-generated image‎

Indeed, many textile arts skills enjoy Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) status: from Indonesian batik to loincloth weaving in Côte d'Ivoire, via the art of embroidery in Palestine, all bear witness to the same desire to make and give body.

These practices question and thus enable us to address:

  • learning techniques: from the transformation of a raw material to its aestheticization;
  • social ties, through the transmission of these practices over time (transgenerational ties) and space (ties between diaspora and country of origin);
  • recognition within the group: while dress does not make the monk, it nevertheless very often remains a marker of social status;
  • the meaning of life stages, when costume is an integral part of ritual (weddings, funerals, commemorations, ...);
  • or again, a society's relationship with its past and the evolutions that run through it.

The choice of this theme is based not only on the cultural richness and diversity of textile arts and the themes they cover, but also and above all on the passion they arouse in our students. We have therefore decided to place them at the heart of this new edition. Among the highlights of these days will be workshops led by our student associations, and a parade of traditional dress will be organized with the students.

We now invite you to draw together the red thread of these two days where researchers, academic specialists, practitioners and amateurs will share their expertise and know-how for this fascinating subject.

Program subject to change.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2025 PROGRAMME
PROGRAM FOR THURSDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2025