A platform for the Northern Basque Country’s oral memory

Mintzoak.eus is a digital platform created and managed by the Basque Cultural Institute with the aim of making sound and audiovisual recordings available to the public which reflect the Northern Basque Country’s collective oral memory.

The context

In the Basque Country, just like elsewhere, intangible cultural heritage is experienced on a daily basis through the language and customs, social practices, rituals, festivities, the performing arts and traditional know-how.

In order to immortalise the experience and knowledge people have of these practices, the Basque Cultural Institute is committed to two major projects: Collecting, archiving and disseminating the Basque Country’s oral memory:

• A project initiated and entirely managed by the BCI in 2007-2008, run by the Department since early 2009 and becoming the Eleketa programme.
• The intellectual processing of former audiovisual recordings (associations, radios, individuals) digitised by the departmental archives: a project carried out within the framework of a multiyear safeguarding and development programme initiated by the Department in 2011.

Other structures also collect the Northern Basque Country’s oral memory (municipalities, associations, individuals). The Basque Cultural Institute created Mintzoak.eus to make all of these archives accessible to everyone.

Aims of Mintzoak.eus

• Make accounts collected in 2007-2008 available with the support of the Basque Cultural Institute (video recordings and information about them).
• Disseminate information about accounts collected since 2009 with the support of the Department (biographies of witnesses, description of content) in order to one day make these video recordings accessible.
• Offer collectors a platform enabling them to make accounts collected in the Northern Basque Country available.
• Acting as a showcase for news about sound and audiovisual archives dealing with the local collective memory.

www.mintzoak.eus aims to be a platform for the Northern Basque Country’s oral memory and will be enriched over the coming months by all our contributions.