Living Heritage in the UK is live!

The UK government’s Department for Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) announces ‘Living Heritage in the UK’, an inventory to capture information about the traditions and customs from across the country.

The Kupala festival in Britain. Image courtesy of Manal Gharzeddin.

Following the UK government’s ratification of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, a period of consultation took place, with communities meeting with civil servants to discuss how an inventory of living heritage may work. Now communities can submit information about their traditions to ‘help to identify the economic value of our traditions, and support efforts to grow this area of national life.’ Crucially, submissions will be accepted over the next four months, and the first inventory will launch in summer 2026.

There will be seven categories under which communities can make their submissions:

• Oral expressions

• Performing arts

• Social practices

• Nature, land and spirituality

• Crafts

• Sports and games

• Culinary practices

Communities must make an Expression of Interest (EOI) first; then the team will be in touch for the next steps. To find out more, please visit: https://livingheritage.unesco.org.uk/

We would dearly love to see the profile of England’s traditions of customs of England (and, of course, the wider UK) raised through this initiated, and we are excited to see how this plays out.