Continuity and Change in the Welsh Eisteddfod: the interchangeability of tradition and innovation in intangible cultural heritage

The traceable roots of the Eisteddfod tradition reach back to the twelfth century. Yet, since the mid nineteenth century, the Welsh have utilised this cultural festival as a vehicle for marking a shifting identity, for performing their place in the world and to represent their views on themselves as people. The Eisteddfod’s history is one of innovation and change, despite its claims of being an embodiment of tradition. In the second half of the twentieth century its nature and significance changed dramatically once broadcast on radio and later television. During the pandemic it has experimented with innovate ways of performing culture and of allowing people to participate in it through various online iterations.
In this chapter, I will argue that the Eisteddfod, in such a changeable context, can only be interpreted as intangible cultural heritage – a range of artistic practices, performances, social practices within a festival context that together form a living expression of Welsh culture at a given moment in time. Its fragility as intangible heritage is critical to its capacity to adapt and to ensure the transmission of cultural knowledge and skills from one generation to the next. I will also discuss the Eisteddfod as contributor to social cohesion and community identity, components that mark it out as intangible cultural heritage. This is despite the overwhelming tendency to measure the festival in terms of its remaining documented and published outputs, which are only one part of its legacy.