Digital archive preserves Artsakh Culture after displacement
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The We Are Our Mountains Development Agency presented the “Digital House of Artsakh Culture” platform in Yerevan, Armenia, to safeguard the region’s heritage.
The agency, founded by Ruben Vardanyan and supported by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, created the digital platform after the forced displacement of the Armenian population of Artsakh in September 2023 disrupted the natural transmission of their culture. The platform aims to collect, preserve, and promote intangible cultural heritage like folklore, rituals, and traditional knowledge.
The Digital House of Artsakh Culture organizes content around the five domains of intangible cultural heritage established by UNESCO. It functions as a digital archive, including a library, video, photo, and audio collections, as well as a dictionary. Project leaders see the platform as a way to keep Artsakh’s culture alive and accessible, presenting it not as a relic of the past, but as a continuing tradition.
Lernik Hovhannisyan of the platform’s scholarly team explained the initiative is especially important given Azerbaijan’s policies that threaten to erase Armenian cultural presence in Artsakh. The team invited residents of Artsakh, researchers, and families with personal archives to contribute materials to the platform, hoping to build a comprehensive record of the region's cultural memory. Historian Hamlet Petrosyan praised the project’s commitment to accuracy and professionalism. The platform is not a finished product.
The We Are Our Mountains Development Agency intends to continually expand the Digital House of Artsakh Culture with new materials and scholarly research to ensure it remains a reliable source of knowledge for future generations.
