**6. Conclusion**

Digital technologies have provided a communications lifeline for practitioners of ICH during the Covid-19 pandemic. In some instances, the social aspect of ICH has been maintained, as choral groups gather to informally practice together online, with participants fully recognising the limitations of video conferencing resources for actually singing together as a group, but instead utilising the platforms as a means of maintaining a sense of community. It is the sustaining of these communities through a period of extended social isolation which will be critical to bringing practices back into a performance, audience driven environment in the years to follow. Without the continuation of practice, many choral groups may well have ceased to operate, leaving gaps in the Welsh cultural performance landscape in the short term, and breaking a continuity of choral tradition in Wales that dates from the seventeenth century.

Maintaining cultural practices such as the Mari Lwyd, through video conferencing, further allows for continuity of custom to be achieved, in an albeit highly limited form. Those cultural forms which depend on movement through landscapes, interactions with households and differing public establishments (namely public houses in this example), will struggle to replicate such elements in a digital context. That a digital archive now exists for some of these practices that, without Covid, may never have been formally committed to film, is an important step in maintaining the visibility of such traditions. However digital technologies must be seen as a resource that can assist in the support and safeguarding of traditions, rather than ever serve as a replacement.

The challenge for heritage professionals now, especially in nations like Wales where there is no formal infrastructure for the safeguarding of intangible heritage, is to find ways of working with community groups that allow for informal digital archiving of tradition to strengthen the status of ICH forms. The creation of recordings does not equate with higher levels of interest in or appreciation for cultural forms. Equally, the heritage sector must be cautious in respecting the wishes of host communities and acknowledge that while digital archiving is an increasingly affordable and viable pathway to pursue, it is one which may not always be consistent with the desires of the source communities themselves. Finding the appropriate balance between a desire to safeguard and promote practices, two objectives which are not

#### *Heritage - New Paradigm*

consistently compatible, through digital pathways will increasingly become an area which the heritage sector will need to resolve. For the time being, and especially during the period of Covid-19, the potential has been demonstrated for video conferencing and sharing to be a means by which aspects of the intangible heritage landscape can be maintained and made visible. Without such resources, customs might well have been lost for the want of a means of transmission of tradition.
