Living Heritage and Sustainable Development

Living Heritage and Sustainable Development, offered by SDG Academy through edX, is an intermediate-level online course designed to examine how intangible cultural heritage, or living heritage, connects with sustainable development. The course explores why living heritage matters for addressing contemporary challenges in areas such as health, education, gender, natural disasters, and conflict, while showing how communities transmit this heritage in ways that strengthen resilience and well-being. It also places the subject in the context of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Core Content

The curriculum focuses on the relationship between living heritage and sustainable development across different cultural and social contexts. It uses examples and experiences from communities around the world to help learners understand how intangible cultural heritage contributes to resilience, identity, continuity, and well-being. The course is framed around explaining the links between safeguarding living heritage and addressing wider development challenges, rather than treating heritage as a separate cultural issue.

Key Skills

Participants will develop the ability to understand what intangible cultural heritage is, explain how it relates to sustainable development, and assess why safeguarding living heritage matters in contemporary policy and community contexts. The course helps learners build a clearer understanding of how heritage contributes to resilience and well-being, while also strengthening their ability to interpret cultural practices through a broader development lens.

Target Learners

This course is designed for students, professionals, and other interested learners who want to understand the connections between intangible cultural heritage and sustainable development. It is particularly relevant for those interested in culture, community resilience, education, development, and policy, as well as practitioners working in related fields. The current edX metadata classifies the course as intermediate level.

Learning Format

Hosted through edX and SDG Academy, the course is delivered in a self-paced online format and can be accessed at any time. SDG Academy lists the course as six modules long with an expected study effort of two to four hours per week. It is free to access, available in English, and includes video transcripts in English, French, Spanish, and Korean. SDG Academy’s FAQ page also notes that, in addition to the edX verified certificate, this course offers a free certificate of completion issued by UNESCO.

Additional Benefits

The course offers practical value for learners who want to understand sustainable development through a cultural and community-centered perspective. Its connection to UNESCO’s safeguarding framework adds strong institutional relevance, while the use of examples from different communities gives the learning a global and applied dimension. For learners interested in how culture and development interact in practice, it provides a useful and distinctive foundation.

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