There are many areas of sustainable development to which intangible cultural heritage safeguarding can contribute: gender equality, cultural diversity and creativity, education, health, income generation and natural disasters, peace-building and more.

UNESCO’s innovative MOOC on Living heritage and sustainable development is a six-week self-paced course, that equips learners to understand how intangible cultural heritage or ‘living heritage’ is related to sustainable development and its relevance in addressing today’s development challenges.

Developed by UNESCO in collaboration with the International Information and Networking Centre in Asia and the Pacific under the auspices of UNESCO (ICHCAP) and the SDG Academy, the course brings together a diverse group of lead experts in the field of intangible cultural heritage and development who collaborated closely with the UNESCO Chair for Research on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Cultural Diversity of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) as lead faculty to develop the content of this course.

The course draws on their longstanding expertise, the experiences of communities engaged in transmitting their living heritage and ten years of implementing UNESCO’s global capacity building programme for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage.

By taking this course, learners will explore examples and experiences of communities from around the world. It will allow them to gain a better understanding of intangible cultural heritage and its relationships with sustainable development in an instructive manner. It is free for everybody to join. The video transcripts of this course are available in 4 languages: English, Spanish, French and Korean.