The training, advanced and further education of the IHS is based on the need for scientific and professionally qualified specialists, junior researchers, teachers and managers for World Heritage, intangible heritage and documentary heritage. It is further based on the need for educational concepts, curricula for schools of different types as well as model projects for the implementation of sustainable education for different target groups as required by various conventions and programmes. The IHS serves this need for capacity building with an expert team specifically trained for the task. The conceptual foundations of this capacity building of the IHS assume the following positions:
- World Heritage has an innovative force for international understanding, which must be mediated beyond the tangible, physical structures of existing sites.
- Capacity building should promote awareness of culture and cultural identity. This also applies to raising awareness in the context of intangible heritage and the Memory of the World Programme.
- The professionalisation demand for World Heritage protection and appropriate usage requires specialist and interdisciplinary know-how in matters of identification and indexing of potential sites, of conservation of sites as well as in the management and interpretation through educational measures of World Heritage. This we provide.
- We also provide specialised know-how for the identification and preparation of nomination files for intangible heritage.
- The issue of sustainability in the implementation of the heritage programmes and conventions, particularly the World Heritage Convention, sets interdisciplinary knowledge as an example for a holistic understanding of tangible and intangible culture and nature in the global context. It requires competence in implementing the Global Strategy, particularly through the mediation of participation concepts, of empowerment and of approaches in community involvement. We also provide these competencies.
- The theme of education and sustainable development is already anchored as a guiding principle in the various heritage conventions and agendas. In this sense, the IHS implements education for sustainable development at heritage sites in the form of model projects and curriculum development for schools. The IHS works to ensure that the topic of heritage in its various facets and in its identity-building function is anchored in school teaching.