The association's aim is to keep traditions alive and to promote them. The tradition value depends on the way we look at patrimony : a great number of intangible patrimony elements have been considered as purely functional and after they have been used there was no need to preserve them.
Fascination with scientific, artistic and technological "advance" led to replace old objects by new ones, customs and traditions by new behaviours, considered as more efficient or more suitabe for tastes of one particular time.
The look at intangible patrimony is changing, its tool value became today a first-hand account of an era. So it acquires a cultural, social and economic value beyond functional reasons.
To make people aware of traditional and folk culture value and of the need to preserve it, a great dissemination of this patrimony elements is essential. Traditonal and folk culture, as a proof of intellectual and collective creativity, has to receive protection and official recognition. That's the project intiated by the UNESCO and to which contributes the National Association for Cultures and Traditions.
To achieve it, traditional know-hows must be disseminated and creativity spured on. It shows how these traditions could be useful in our modern society. As a result, evolution must be accepted.

During multicultural meetings, like "World Cultures" festival in Gannat and other occasions (foreign groups in Gannat, international meetings of craftsmen..) everyone express his own culture.This kind of meetings is very successful as it enables to go beyond nostalgia and to take part in real respectful and constructive cultural exchanges

Relying on ethnographical research, its local and international network, the National Association for Cultures and Traditions conducts various actions :

• It has its own animation schedule (shows and exhibitions, thistle and prickly plants festival, music competition, World Cultures Festival, children holidays).
• It works for town halls, committees,associations and creates cultural events (Grape harvest festival for the Vineyard Museum, Saint-Urbain night for Monum'vert, Languedoc fair for Loupian town hall, foreign groups programming, festival organization)
• It conducts ethnographical researches and promotes them through different exhibitions, design objects making, new museological form design (cabinet of curios). The association has a resource centre on traditional cultures for teachers, youth workers, associative officials.

Since 1986 and within the Bon Coin day, the National Association for Cultures and traditions organizes during the Easter week-end a regional competition of traditional music from the Massif Central. Through this event, the artistic director Patrick Bouffard intends to promote traditional music creation.

Practise :
Each year more than 50 or so musicians apply to participate in this event. In general most of them are from a regional conservatoire or practise music regularly: they are living proof that the practise of playing a traditional instrument is booming

Creation :
Each year a special composition award is granted to a creative musician: this aspect allows us to evaluate just how much this music is alive! For 3 or 4 years, we have observed a real craze for creation in music and this is what we have to encourage.

Dissemination :
Regional artists can express themselves and share the stage with other scheduled groups on the occasion of the concert-dances.

A cabinet of curiosities is usually defined as a microcosm or summary of the world where one finds objects from land, sea and air side by side with man made objects.
16th and 17th century collectors used their cabinets of curiosities to show objects created by artists or inventors, revealing the mysteries of unknown worlds and inventions.

For the first time, the association launched a museographical type of action. Within the "Mémoire en Bocage Bourbonnais" programme, the association entrusted scenographic arts professionals with the creation of a cabinet of curios prototype based on thread and weaving. This cabinet of curiosities, a crossbreeding of knowledge from the Bourbonnais and elsewhere and a link between tradition and innovation, is a tribute to the Living Human Treasures of the Bourbonnais based on thread. Design : Nathalie Coutard, Claude Nessi