France and Belgium’s fairground culture has been recognised by UNESCO as “intangible cultural heritage of humanity.”
The 19th Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage met in Paraguay earlier this week and added the culture to its list, with around 850 family businesses throughout Belgium represented.
Belgium’s largest fair, the Foire du Midi, attracts almost 1.5 million visitors each year and includes a number of traditional attractions. Fairs in the Brussels region often last several weekends and return multiple times a year, compared with more traditional carnivals which would only visit once a year.
Around 7,000 Belgians are employed by the industry, with Urban Brussels, the body that submitted the application, saying that fairground culture “represents an itinerant way of life in which family and professional live and closely intertwined, and whose traditions and expertise, developed over the years, are essentially passed on orally within the community and within the family.”
