Journal of Tourism Consumption and Practice Volume 2 No.2 2010 ISSN 1757-031X 124 Sharing Cultures 2009 – International Conference on Intangible Heritage, Pico Island, Azores, Portugal, 29 May – 1 June. Graham Busby, University of Plymouth The Azores stretch four hundred miles from Flores in the west to Santa Maria in the east; this conference was held on Pico, an island not overly endowed with hotels in Maddalena (there‟s just the Caravelas) which necessitated many of the delegates travelling thirty or forty minutes by boat each day from Horta on Faial: how common is this for a conference? Sitting next to Chun-Hsi Wang (National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan) on the boat began to make this reporter aware that two days travel was nothing compared to the journeys made by some – reinforced not long after by sitting next to Guido Pigliasco (University of Hawaii) for the Opening Session held in the... town hall. Congratulations to Professor Sergio Lira and the Green Lines Institute for bringing nearly one hundred delegates to the middle of the Atlantic and utilising local facilities. The Saturday and Sunday parallel sessions were held in the recently built Elementary School, adding another facet of community involvement – and only a few minutes‟ walk from the nearest part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site „Pico Island Vineyard Culture‟. In the opening plenary session, Emeritus Professor Susan Pearce (University of Leicester) stated that she has been told to be „provocative‟ in her comments; for some, she clearly was. Her presentation was titled „Material Matters‟ – the argument being that, traditionally, matter is „bad‟ and temporal vis à vis the intangible being creative and spiritual. She suggested that from the Greeks, through the Enlightenment and Descartes, mind was perceived as active, matter as passive and, hence, the former superior. The 1964 and 1972 UNESCO charters were seen to favour those cultures with distinctly tangible heritage; hence, with the 2005 UNESCO Convention on Intangible Heritage, material-based specialists like Pearce were faced with a double assault: product without matter and the material culture needed to be seen as an integrative component. An excellent example was shown, namely a Pitt- Rivers Museum artefact label... whereby the labels have become museum pieces! Indeed, the audience were advised that postcards of these labels are now available,