Designing Heritage-Sensitive IP and Marketing Strategies for ICH-Based Creative Economy

Can intellectual property and marketing strategies help bearer communities to make a sustainable living from their intangible heritage? This is the question that underpinned a British Academy-funded interdisciplinary research project that comprised researchers from the UK, France, and Italy, and an NGO from Kolkata. This contribution describes the development and implementation of heritage-sensitive intellectual property and marketing strategies (HIPAMS) with two communities in West Bengal – Chau dancers and Chau mask-makers who were at the heart of the project. Using methods including forum theatre and walking stories, the research team and the communities’ highlighted challenges faced by the communities in making a sustainable living from their heritage skills and developed ways in which HIPAMS could be used by the communities to their advantage while retaining a focus on the importance of the heritage. The initial evaluation shows how significant these strategies can be for heritage communities, however small and incremental the advances made.