MONDIACULT 2025 Official Side Events
"The Living Heritage / Living the Heritage: Community Voices and Expert Dialogues for a Resilient Future”
ICOMOS SDG Working Group and the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
When: Wednesday 1 October 13:30 – 14:30.
Where: Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona (CCIB).
We are pleased to announce that our side event, “The Living Heritage / Living the Heritage,” has been accepted for MONDIACULT 2025 in Barcelona. Launched by UNESCO in 1982, MONDIACULT has become the world’s largest cultural policy conference and a leading platform for global advocacy, dialogue, and collaboration. As the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda nears its conclusion, MONDIACULT 2025 is a pivotal moment to build consensus and accelerate momentum toward recognizing culture as a standalone goal in the next United Nations strategy for sustainable development.
Organized in partnership with the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture (Ithra), our session positions heritage, both tangible and intangible, as a core driver and enabler of development that sustains a living planet. At its heart is an imperative to recognize, respect, and amplify cultural rights; to acknowledge the broad yet inequitable economic contributions of culture and the creative arts; and to confront the escalating risks posed by climate change and humanitarian crises. This session will be a catalytic platform for dialogue, exchange, and reflection that leads to action. Through case studies and insights from heritage knowledge holders, specialists, and practitioners, we will propose actionable solutions that advance sustainability goals and demonstrate the vital role of heritage in shaping the future of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The session will:
- Elevate living heritage, crafts, traditional local knowledge, and cultural practices as active forces for equitable, resilient, and sustainable ways of life.
- Recognize crafts as living knowledge systems and emphasize their role in social cohesion, community resilience, and cultural continuity.
- Examine the societal conditions that influence the vitality of crafts, and demonstrate how cultural programming and policy can create enabling environments for sustainable futures.
- Illustrate how living heritage both shapes and is shaped by built environments, from historic cities to evolving cultural landscapes, supporting adaptation in times of crisis, fostering innovation, and ensuring intergenerational transmission of knowledge.
We invite policymakers, cultural leaders, funders, and practitioners to join us, contribute concrete commitments, and help consolidate a global coalition to embed culture as a standalone goal in the post-2030 development agenda. Together, we can move from dialogue to delivery, advancing policies, investments, and partnerships that keep culture at the heart of sustainable development.
For more information on ICOMOS please visit: https://www.icomos.org/
For more information on Mondiacult 2025 please visit: https://www.unesco.org/en/mondiacult
