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In the framework of UNESCO's efforts, through the , to highlight the links between the safeguarding of intangible heritage and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the 2030 Agenda, UNESCO Mexico and UNESCO Montevideo organized, with the support of the Network for Academic Cooperation on Intangible Cultural Heritage in Latin America and the Caribbean - , an online seminar to draw attention to the interrelationship between intangible cultural heritage and higher education institutions, with a specific focus on regional university networks.

The event had the institutional support and participation of the Regional Centre for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Latin America - , the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean – , and the Ibero-American General Secretariat - . Experts from Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Africa and more than 1,200 people who followed the activity from different platforms joined to share important reflections on the subject.

The first panel was dedicated to higher education networks on ICH, with representatives from different regions, who addressed the relationship between academia and communities and the level of alignment between the universities' agenda and local specificities. The speakers highlighted the importance of the contributions of the communities' knowledge and testimonies to influence academic research and teaching and, through them, public cultural policies. They also emphasised the need to think of new communication links and new forms of relationship based on interaction and cultural diversity. In this sense, they considered the possibility of building new bridges to promote research projects and the exchange of experiences that will help to unite communities and higher education institutions.

In the second session, the preliminary and prospective results of the ReCA PCI LAC applied research project "" were presented, aimed at identifying community practices that position ICH as a key factor in social inclusion processes for the full exercise of rights. In this advance, the multidimensional analytical model developed by the academics from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Dominican Republic and Uruguay that make up the research group was presented, with the aim of promoting the strengthening of a management of ICH that allows complex problems of society to be addressed from the ICH and to contribute to intersectoral and inter-institutional work. The different dimensions addressed in the model - social-environmental, socio-economic, cultural, political-institutional, technical-communication and educational - aim, in the words of Dr. Patricia San Martín, to:

The final panel addressed the role of carrier communities in ICH research. Interventions by prominent teachers and spokespersons from indigenous communities pointed out the need to overcome models that take communities only as informants in order to create true open dialogues that allow ICH bearers to feel recognized in their expertise. The lack of two-way research in which the communities themselves actively participate in the generation of knowledge and in the appropriation and use of the results was stressed. Irma Pineda and Enrique Pérez López highlighted the importance of these new methodologies to promote the self-recognition of indigenous identities and their inherent rights, as well as the processes of cultural strengthening and development in their contribution to the safeguarding of ICH.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the effects of inequalities and asymmetries present in the Latin American region, but at the same time cultural processes and ICH in particular reveal processes of resistance and resilience that must be apprehended for research and teaching. .