ICH Courier

ntangible cultural heritage (ICH) – the living traditions, knowledge, and skills that shape people’s daily lives – is one of the most powerful tools for empowering
communities. Unlike external development models, ICH grows from within: it is local, sustainable, and rich with meaning. For UNESCO, recognizing communities as the custodians of this heritage means acknowledging that they also hold the keys to their own development.
Over the past decade, UNESCO Jakarta has used ICH as an entry point for community engagement across Indonesia. From ancient temple landscapes to coastal villages, the office’s approach has aimed to show that safeguarding heritage and improving livelihoods can—and should—go hand in hand, with ICH serving as the bridge between the two. The experiences in Borobudur and Belitung illustrate how ICH- based initiatives can reconnect people with their heritage while opening new pathways for sustainable growth.

From Monument-Centered to People-Centered Heritage
For much of the twentieth century, heritage work focused on monuments, museums, and artifacts. Technical expertise and legal protection dominated the field, leaving little space for local voices. Communities were often viewed as outsiders to conservation—sometimes even as obstacles.
UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage marked a major shift. It recognized that heritage lives in people, not just in stones or collections. Still, putting this principle into practice is not always easy, especially at World Heritage sites, where management systems remain largely top-down. UNESCO Jakarta has sought to reverse this perspective: instead of starting from monuments, it begins with people—their traditions, aspirations, and creativity—and builds heritage engagement from there. This approach has redefined how communities relate to heritage and how heritage contributes to community well-being.

Reconnecting Communities and the Borobudur World Heritage Site
Borobudur, one of the world’s largest Buddhist monuments, attracts millions of visitors each year and stands as a symbol of Indonesian pride. Yet for many of the surrounding villagers, the site has long felt distant—economically, socially, and spiritually. A UNESCO survey in 2012 showed that residents around Borobudur earned less than the regional average, despite living beside a major tourist attraction. Most economic benefits went to outside operators, while local livelihoods remained fragile.
To bridge this divide, UNESCO Jakarta initiated a cultural mapping exercise in 20 surrounding villages in 2018 and further updated in 2021. The goal was not to collect data, but to rediscover connections between people and the monument. Through participatory workshops, the team ed local crafts, rituals, oral traditions, and livelihoods—and found surprising continuities. Pottery, musical instruments and farming scenes carved in Borobudur’s reliefs are still practiced today. Villagers were astonished to see that their daily activities echoed the stories on the temple walls. This realization sparked a new sense of pride. Communities began to see themselves not as bystanders to a World Heritage site, but as its living descendants.

The mapping process also helped local governments recognize cultural resources as development motifs, encouraging more participatory planning and inspiring creative ideas for the community livelihood, such as batik motives inspired by the reliefs of the Borobudur monuments.

Youth and Creativity: The Kita Muda Kreatif Program
Building on this foundation, UNESCO launched Kita Muda Kreatif (Creative Youth Network) in 2017. The programme mentors young entrepreneurs aged 18–30 from communities near World Heritage sites such as Borobudur, Prambanan, Sangiran, Bali and Yogyakarta. It trains them to blend creativity with local tradition—turning intangible heritage into inspiration for business.
Participants have since created heritage-inspired products ranging from natural-dye batik and crafts to culinary innovations and guided tours. During the pandemic, when international tourism collapsed, these youth-led initiatives helped redirect visitors to nearby villages and kept cultural economies alive.
By linking traditional skills with modern branding and design, the programme has demonstrated that safeguarding heritage can also mean creating jobs. As one young participant remarked, “I used to think Borobudur belonged to

archaeologists. Now I see that it belongs to us too.”

Extending the Approach to the Sea: The Belitung Initiative
Inspired by the Borobudur experience, UNESCO Jakarta applied a similar approach to a very different context— Indonesia’s underwater cultural heritage. The island of Belitung, located along ancient maritime trade routes, is home to the famous 9th-century Belitung (Tang) shipwreck, a sunken Arab dhow carrying Tang-dynasty ceramics. For years, discussions about such shipwrecks were dominated by technical experts and treasure hunters, leaving local communities largely disengaged.
In late 2024, UNESCO Jakarta’s project in Batu Itam Village began not with lectures, but with listening. During informal gatherings, residents shared stories, maritime knowledge, and local beliefs connected to the sea. These conversations revealed wealth of intangible heritage—from

traditional shipbuilding and fishing techniques to culinary practices, crafts, and performing arts—that linked the villagers to the wider history of maritime exchange.
Through recognizing and validating these practices, communities began to view underwater sites not as foreign relics but as part of their own cultural landscape. The project later evolved into small creative-industry initiatives inspired by maritime heritage, with mentorship in crafts, design, village tours and storytelling.
While still in its early stages, the Belitung Initiative shows that even highly technical heritage domains, like underwater archaeology, can become inclusive and community-driven when approached through the lens of ICH.

Lessons Learned
1. Start with what people value. By beginning with local traditions and skills, projects build trust and relevance before introducing broader heritage concepts.

2. Empower, don’t instruct. Communities already possess the knowledge and creativity needed to sustain their heritage; external experts should act as facilitators, not authorities.
3. Connect safeguarding with livelihoods. When heritage contributes to well-being, communities have stronger incentives to protect it.
4. Recognize youth as cultural innovators. Their ability to reinterpret tradition through design, media, and entrepreneurship is key to keeping heritage alive. The involvement of youth brings fresh creativity and innovative approaches, ensuring that the intervention strategies remain relevant and effective in today’s context.

Heritage for the Future
UNESCO’s work in Indonesia demonstrates that safeguarding intangible cultural heritage is not about freezing traditions in time, but about enabling them to evolve. When people see that their knowledge and creativity have value, heritage

becomes a resource for the future—not just a memory of the past. This paradigm shift, grounded in a participatory approach, will also make the protection of heritage sites and underwater archaeology more sustainable—fields that were once the exclusive domain of experts and governments. By engaging communities directly, it nurtures new allies for heritage, fostering renewed respect and interest not only in their own heritage but in that of humanity as a whole. In an era of rapid change, this people-centered approach offers a powerful model for inclusive development. By listening first to communities, and by treating their living heritage as the foundation of engagement, UNESCO Jakarta has shown that ICH can be both a bridge and a catalyst—connecting people to their history while opening pathways toward a more sustainable future. ICH