With support from the UNESCO Heritage Emergency Fund, the pilot project ‘Teaching and learning with living heritage in Ukraine’ is collaborating with the Development Center ‘Democracy through the Culture’, the UNESCO Chair in Science Education in Kyiv, and 15 primary and secondary schools across Ukraine, including 10 UNESCO Associated Schools, to integrate living heritage elements into school subjects, such as mathematics, physics or literature.
Living heritage is known for providing a solid foundation for the identity and well-being of communities. When integrated into school-based education, living heritage contributes to achieving Quality Education (SDG 4), while cultivating learners’ sense of identity, continuity and belonging. The project demonstrates the role that culture can play in emergency contexts to facilitate recovery and reinforce cultural diversity under threat.
In the region of Kharkiv, a team of teachers and students from the Krasnokutsky Lyceum, have been working on integrating the tradition of mazanka (mud hut) across several subjects of their curriculum. The school team visited nearby villages to observe mazankas dating from the early 20th century. ‘We realized that all of them were built using the same rules, with 100% natural materials’, said Natalya Momot, the project coordinator. For the physics class, teachers and students built three models of houses to study the selected elements of brick, wooden and plastered house and to better understand their isolation characteristics. ‘We will heat these huts and take temperature measurements to find out their thermal conductivity’, added Natalya Momot. For chemistry, the students will create a chalk mixture for whitewashing the plastered houses. As a final activity, the school team wishes to learn about the traditional techniques of building mazankas by helping a local community to restore one of their mud huts.
‘Teaching and learning with living heritage in Ukraine’ builds on the positive results of the joint UNESCO-European Union project about Teaching and learning with living heritage, which was implemented in close cooperation with the network of UNESCO Associated Schools in Europe (ASPnet) from 2020 to 2021. The Resource Kit for Teachers developed in the context of the project will be translated and adapted to the Ukrainian context, allowing for the methodology to be further replicated and reach more youth across Ukraine.
This activity was supported by the UNESCO Heritage Emergency Fund. We wish to thank its donors: the Qatar Fund for Development, the Government of Canada, the Kingdom of Norway, the French Republic, the Principality of Monaco, the Republic of Estonia, ANA Holdings Inc., the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Principality of Andorra, and the Republic of Serbia.
