Over the past twenty years ICOM has been fostering a broader professional practice in heritage management that includes tangible and intangible heritage. At the ICOM General Conference in Barcelona, July 2001, several meetings emphasised the need to develop a range of methods for identifying and managing resources, both tangible and intangible. ICOM also has an important contribution to make in the drafting of the Convention on Intangible Heritage that UNESCO is currently preparing.
ICOM commitment to protecting intangible heritage is shown in the fact that the theme of the General Conference of ICOM in 2004 in Seoul, Korea, is Intangible Heritage.