UNESCO is advancing its project “Latin America and the Caribbean: Capacity-building for resilient communities through sustainable tourism and the safeguarding of heritage,” which unites 10 countries in the region to strengthen capacities for protecting Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) and promoting its integration into urban planning. Supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the initiative is part of UNESCO’s Programme on Culture and Digital Technologies and aims to connect communities’ living memory with inclusive, sustainable, and identity-respectful urban development amid rapid urban transformations.
Intangible Cultural Heritage in the region faces multiple pressures, including rapid urbanization, migration, climate change, real-estate development, and the gradual loss of traditional practices. With 80% of Latin America and the Caribbean’s population living in cities, these dynamics affect both daily life and the transmission of cultural heritage, making safeguarding ICH a critical priority for resilient urban development.
To address these challenges, UNESCO has conducted workshops in cities including Trujillo, San José, Oaxaca de Juárez, San Salvador, Santo Domingo, Antigua, Colón, Belmopan, and Trinidad. These workshops brought together public officials, cultural practitioners, tradition bearers, and specialists to discuss the role of ICH in contemporary urban life and its potential to strengthen social cohesion. Nearly 300 participants have engaged in these dialogues, exploring how cultural expressions can inspire new ways of inhabiting cities while reinforcing identity and supporting sustainable development.
The workshops also included experiential learning. In Antigua Guatemala, participants visited San Juan del Obispo to engage with gastronomy, handicrafts, and traditional chocolate-making, highlighting the role of living heritage in fostering cohesion, innovation, and urban sustainability. In San José, visits to urban markets demonstrated how these everyday spaces transmit culture, while discussions focused on regulatory frameworks and safeguarding measures suitable for urban contexts. In Oaxaca de Juárez, participants explored pedal loom weaving and tinwork, initiating a first inventory of ICH in urban areas to understand its relationship with evolving city dynamics.
The project emphasizes a multisectoral and community-based approach. In El Salvador, collaboration among over twenty officials helped establish inter-institutional projects to integrate ICH into the Historic Centre of San Salvador. In the Dominican Republic, dialogue in the Colonial City connected heritage bearers, municipal authorities, and cultural specialists to explore interactions between living heritage and World Heritage properties.
Beyond technical capacity-building, the initiative seeks to broaden understanding of how living heritage contributes to human-centred, creative, and resilient cities. UNESCO fosters spaces for participation, collaboration, and community leadership, ensuring that communities remain central to safeguarding and transmitting their cultural heritage.
As a result of the project, 20 regional experts have been trained to lead workshops, and participatory inventories of urban ICH have begun, enabling communities to document and explore practices essential to their identity. In 2026, the project will enter its next phase, developing participatory roadmaps with national and local authorities to integrate living heritage into public policies and local programmes, strengthening the connection between culture, territory, and sustainable urban development across Latin America and the Caribbean.
