In October 2003, a UNESCO treaty was approved for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. This represented a shift in the understanding of what heritage is. Initially, ‘heritage’ was used to describe physical items and locations of cultural value: battle sites, old tools, textiles, etc. Eventually, this definition expanded to include the natural environment generally. But these views of heritage left out the intangible aspects of culture, such as performances, events, crafts, sports, and more. These intangible aspects of heritage are often called ‘living heritage’, and they come with additional benefits beyond the actual activity that is taking place, such as strengthening community bonds and transferring important things like language, stories and values.
The treaty came into effect in 2006, with different member countries of the UN signing on to the treaty and taking on the creation of their own inventories of living heritage. In 2023, the team developing the UK inventory began their planning, and at the end of 2025, they announced that they were nearly ready to take on the first round of entries for the Inventory of Living Heritage in the UK.
The purposes of this Inventory align with SOK’s mission: to preserve and protect living heritage. In SOK’s case, that means the preservation and protection of Shetland Lace, Fair Isle knitting, and domestic machine knitting.
SOK registered interest in creating entries for Shetland Lace and Fair Isle knitting for the first round of the inventory as soon as we heard about the project. In early 2026, information was released about what the process would entail, including training, gathering community consent and input on the suggested inventory entry, documenting approval from the community, and the submission process itself.
At the end of February and into March, representatives of SOK visited as many local makkin groups as we could to tell local knitters about the project and invite them to a meeting to discuss the entries. We created an email list and Facebook group just for our local audience to post updates, and we sent press releases to local media to further spread the word.
The meeting was held in the middle of March and 15 local knitters participated in person or online to identify what the key aspects of each craft was, who practices them, how they impact the world and community, and more. SOK then drafted the entries and posted them online, again spreading the word to local knitters to offer feedback and vote yea or nay on the entries. We made a small tweak to the wording of the drafts based on community input and the entries received 100% yea votes.
SOK submitted the entries the day before the deadline, and now we wait. The Inventory committee will now spend up to 10 months reading through all of the entries they received. If necessary, they will suggest changes our entries. Otherwise, we just wait for the listings to go live.
This inventory is important for community-held knowledge like Fair Isle and Shetland Lace. Both are very much a living heritage still being practiced in Shetland where the crafts were developed. As community held knowledge, the output of the crafts cannot be copyrighted at this stage, which removes any legal avenues to combat appropriation, copying and resale of designs, etc. But acknowledgement as a living heritage provides an ethical baseline for protection.
Submitting the entries from a Shetland-based group means that the community will retain control of the entries in the future. If the crafts shift or if the wording needs to be altered, we can repeat the community consent process and make the changes ourselves, without having to petition the government of Inventory team for permission.
If you are a local knitter who would like to hear from us directly about future community initiatives, please join our mailing list or Facebook group for local people. If you are a learner from outside of Shetland, we would love to update you on projects such as this. Please join our general email list or follow us on Facebook or Instagram.