Tocatì: a game stays alive when it changes hands

A spinning top in a display case can tell the story of an object; a person demonstrating how to use it opens another possibility. This is our example for approaching Tocatì, the programme for safeguarding traditional games and sports promoted by Associazione Giochi Antichi. We are not describing a scene actually observed at its festival. The broader question is what must be preserved for a game to remain in practice, beyond the equipment used to play it. [1]

The programme is multinational, involving Italy, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus and France. Tocatì entered UNESCO’s Register of Good Safeguarding Practices on 1 December 2022. The recognition concerns a way of working with communities. It does not certify that every rule is unchangeable or that one game is better than another. This is a cultural feature: the date of recognition remains 2022, rather than becoming an event that has just happened. Keeping that distinction makes the continuing work easier to understand. [1]

Italy’s National Commission for UNESCO highlights exchange between generations and dialogue between cultures. The international street games festival in Verona is the programme’s main activity, but the programme extends beyond those days. Tocatì’s website describes continuing work in practice, research and training. Here, preservation can mean creating opportunities for somebody to learn and somebody else to continue teaching, instead of separating a game from the people who give it life. The activity matters alongside the objects it uses. [3][2]

Documented activities include school workshops, local initiatives, inventories developed in dialogue with practitioners, and attention to access to spaces. These are different tools: a recording can retain an explanation, a meeting can provide a chance to try it, and an agreement can help keep a place available. None automatically replaces the others. The programme presents these interventions as safeguarding measures, not as a promise that every difficulty faced by participating communities has already been solved. [2]

Return to our imaginary spinning top. One person hands it to another, but questions may arise before they begin: where may it be launched, how do players take turns, and which rules are they using? The example is not meant to represent every traditional game in a single scene. It makes visible the often quiet work of transmission: explaining, demonstrating, allowing a turn and listening to a question. A preserved object and a shared practice are connected things, but they are not identical. [3]

Our editorial invitation is to seek a community that practises a game and ask how its members want to describe it, without assigning them invented traditions or a frozen past. One can begin by listening to a rule before trying to win. For a moment, heritage then means more than something we look at: it can also concern a relationship in which we participate attentively. The first useful question might be how to join, rather than how to become an expert immediately. [2]