Cultural heritage as a resource for a sustainable society

Cultural heritage is an essential component of the self-image of individuals and societies. It expresses their values and norms and also has the potential to act as a unifying element within communities. At the same time, cultural heritage represents an almost immeasurable store of historical knowledge and a reservoir for future insights and ideas, and therefore offers enormous potential for research.

The BMFTR’s funding guideline ‘Cultural Heritage as a Resource for a Sustainable Society’ combines historical perspectives with contemporary issues and supports research in the humanities, cultural studies and social sciences that develops concrete solutions in cooperation with applied research or partners outside academia.

Whether it concerns the revival of traditional building techniques for climate-resilient architecture, the role of places of remembrance for social cohesion, or the instrumentalisation of cultural practices – cultural heritage offers a wide range of starting points for rethinking current challenges. The funding guidelines aim to systematically explore and harness this potential. They focus not only on the preservation of cultural heritage, but above all on social transformation, and thus on the potential of cultural heritage for addressing current and future issues.

The definition of cultural heritage is deliberately broad: it encompasses tangible and intangible artefacts, places, practices, forms of knowledge and narratives. These artefacts shape collective identities, values and patterns of behaviour. A central feature of the funding is its interdisciplinary orientation. Projects should be led by the humanities, cultural studies or social sciences and collaborate with researchers from the engineering, natural and life sciences or with partners from the field. Only in this way can solutions be developed that have an impact beyond academic discourse.

At European level, the BMFTR is an active partner in the European Partnership on Resilient Cultural Heritage and will help shape the research agenda in the coming years, as well as participating in funding within the cultural heritage sector through a range of international funding guidelines (more on the European Partnership).