The Living Heritage Journal is a publication of the Regional Centre Sofia – UNESCO, that was launched in 2018 with the idea of contributing to the dissemination of knowledge, ideas, and good practices, of raising questions and suggesting answers, of creating a conducive environment for discussing challenges pertinent to the intangible cultural heritage and of covering policies, both international and national, of the Regional Centre’s Member States.

The purpose of the Journal is to provide a broad forum in support of the safeguarding, preservation, dissemination and sharing of living heritages.

The Journal provides visibility to the intangible cultural heritage, making it recognizable, discoverable, identifiable and perceivable. There is still a need to publicize and promote the knowledge pertinent to the intangible cultural heritage, to present it in its many forms of manifestation, with a special emphasis on the fact that it constitutes part of the contemporary lifestyle of the respective locations. The shared heritages, whether verbal or visual, as well as the narratives regarding important events, cultural landscapes, heritages coming from diverse areas such as artisanal handicrafts, music, food, cultural technologies, interactive museum attractions, the new perspectives of those heritages or their creative re-enactment, their connections to the development of local communities – all of these give substance to the intangible cultural heritage, making it understandable while prompting a comparison with what is already known, thus enabling the discovery of new cultural practices constituting ‘living heritages’.

Thus, the living heritage indicates the commonalities as well as the specific elements of cultural practices inherent in the 17 Member States. This provides a solid foundation for their presentation through the Journal, and for their perception by the readers as a cultural wealth, a cultural diversity and therefore a value, in line with the Convention and all subsequent documents of UNESCO related to it.

The UNESCO policies concerning living heritages also find expression in the various thematic highlights featured in the Journal. They seek to draw the readers’ attention to important events and anniversaries of relevance to significant international decisions, while also reflecting dynamic changes in the historical, social, cultural and political context which societies themselves create, and in which the processes of research, safeguarding, preservation and development of living heritages take place. The permanent sections in the Journal, combined with the high quality of the textual and photographic content, paint a vivid picture of the cultural diversity in the member states by pointing out their common features as well as their specificities, while at the same time providing the knowledge and skills necessary for perceiving and appreciating the living heritages as a value in their own right.

The Journal also has an educational effect, in that it not only presents a great diversity of living heritages but also indicates areas where those heritages can be identified and, respectively, developed, while suggesting how they can be leveraged to attract broader audiences to the major specific policy documents of UNESCO.

It is therefore essential to underline that special attention is paid to the young people as ambassadors of the ideas of the living heritage and the need for its safeguarding and transmission over time. In that context, the Journal is one of the few platforms for sharing their interactions and experiences in dealing with the intangible cultural heritage, on the one hand, and on the other, for their development into discoverers and creators who share their knowledge and emotions. And, most importantly, they discover the living heritages as part of the contemporary way of life and draw the attention of their peers to that thematic sphere.