The Solstice Fire Festivals in the Pyrenees: Constructing a Didactic Programme for Formal Education along with the Educational and Bearer Communities

Abstract

In 2015, UNESCO inscribed the summer solstice fire festivals in the Pyrenees on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. A few years later, a didactic programme was launched to incorporate the tradition into formal education, designed and developed in collaboration with the bearer and educational communities. Specifically, to accomplish the project, both collectives priorly analyzed and validated the proposal through field work, discussion groups, and qualitative and quantitative methods. The results demonstrated the need for cross-disciplinary materials designed to incorporate the festivals into formal education, the benefits of involving the bearer and educational communities in an initiative of these characteristics, and the usefulness of the project for the valorization of ICH and the imparting of curricular contents.

Keywords

• fire festivals
• solstices
• Pyrenees
• heritage education
• formal education
• Spain