Art of Coding
The campaign to get the demoscene recognised as living cultural heritage, one country at a time, with UNESCO as the end goal.
The initiative got going around 2019 on the premise that a digital subculture can be intangible heritage just as much as folk dance or a craft. UNESCO's convention requires a tradition to be on a national inventory first, so sceners in each country had to write the applications themselves. Finland went first in 2020, Germany followed in 2021, and several other European countries have joined since.
The argument was that the demoscene fits the criteria better than you might expect: a practice handed down across generations for more than thirty years, with its own traditions, gatherings and norms. Parties and competitions are the visible rituals. Seeing sceners on the same list as choral singing has raised more than one eyebrow.