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Cultural Heritage

The Cultural Heritage Sector encompasses preserving, promoting, and celebrating the tangible and intangible heritage of societies worldwide. It includes museums, historical sites, libraries, archives, cultural festivals, and traditional practices passed down through generations.

This sector is crucial in safeguarding artefacts, monuments, languages, customs, and rituals that reflect communities’ identity, history, and values. Professionals in this field work to conserve heritage sites, curate exhibitions, digitise archives, and facilitate educational programs to ensure the transmission of cultural knowledge to future generations.

The Cultural Heritage industry promotes social cohesion, cross-cultural dialogue, and sustainable tourism by fostering an understanding and appreciation of diverse cultural expressions. It serves as a repository of collective memory, fostering pride in cultural identity and respect for cultural diversity, enriching humanity’s shared heritage.

For the Cultural Heritage Sector, typically the greatest direct environmental impact areas are Energy, Nature & Biodiversity, and Travel & Transport. To learn more about these topics, use the buttons below.

For managers, leaders and executives, another key impact area is Governance & Communications – to find out more, click the button below.

Resources

To go directly to some resources for the Cultural Heritage Sector, click on some of our examples below:

Sustainable Tools in Cultural Heritage – Carbon Calculator

Strengthening cultural heritage resilience for climate change

The Guide to Plastic-Free Festivals & Events

Sowing Seeds – How to make a Sustainable Short Film

The Galway International Film Festival

More...

For further case studies, research & reports, and resource organisations for the Cultural Heritage, head over to our resources section, or find some digital tools, guides & manuals, and templates in our toolbox.

Sustainable Tools in Cultural Heritage – Carbon Calculator

Sustainability Tools in Cultural Heritage (STiCH) is a life cycle assessment (LCA) Carbon Calculator and Library of Case Studies and Information Sheets developed to help cultural heritage professionals make educated, sustainable choices to lower the environmental impact of their work.

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Strengthening cultural heritage resilience for climate change

This report summarises the work of the EU Open Method of Coordination (OMC) group of Member States’ experts on ‘Strengthening cultural heritage resilience for climate change’. In their report, the OMC expert group formulates a set of key recommendations for policy makers, based on their findings.

 

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The Guide to Plastic-Free Festivals & Events

The Guide To Plastic-Free Festivals and Events represents a pioneering effort in Ireland to revolutionise the way arts and cultural events are conducted. By providing comprehensive strategies to eliminate plastic usage, the guide aims to significantly reduce environmental impact and promote sustainability within these sectors.

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Sowing Seeds – How to make a Sustainable Short Film

Sowing Seeds is a documentary about an Irish pilot project in the sustainable filming of the short, The Last Harvest.

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European Eco-Policies Report

This report analyses national and European policies on Ecodesign for sustainable Creative and Cultural Industries has been produced as a reference document to guide the development of recommendations to foster transparency and recognition of Ecodesign for sustainable Creative and Cultural Industries.

 

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The Galway International Film Festival

A Case Study of the Sustainability Plan generated for the world reknowned Galway International Film Fleadh.

 

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