Patrimonito Storyboard Competition 2022

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre is pleased to launch the latest edition of the Patrimonito Storyboard Competition 2022. This competition aims to provide young people with an opportunity to use their creative and problem-solving skills to raise awareness about World Heritage sites.

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The World Heritage Education Programme is welcoming secondary school pupils and youth to create storyboards on the theme for this year’s competition. The best submission will be selected by an independent jury and professionally produced into animated films for global distribution to schools and at World Heritage education events.

Patrimonito’s World Heritage Adventures cartoon series is a flagship activity carried out under the World Heritage Education Programme, since 2002. The cartoon series aims to raise awareness of the importance of heritage preservation among the youth, through a “by young people, for young people” approach, inviting them to convey the message of World Heritage preservation to their peers.

So far, 14 episodes of Patrimonito’s World Heritage Adventures have been produced and are available to the greater public through the UNESCO World Heritage Website and the UNESCO social media channels.

The character of Patrimonito was created on the basis of the World Heritage Emblem by a group of Spanish-speaking students at the First World Heritage Youth Forum held in Bergen, Norway in 1995. Patrimonito means “small heritage” in Spanish and represents a young heritage guardian.

Patrimonito has since then been widely adopted as the international mascot of the World Heritage Education Programme. Since 2002, Patrimonito is also the main character of the Patrimonito´s World Heritage Adventures cartoon series.

Storyboard Competition Theme: World Heritage and Climate Change

Climate change is the defining issue of their time and among the greatest threats facing cultural and natural heritage today. Many of the natural sites and cultural heritage sites inscribed on the Worle Heritage List are currently threatened by climate change.

In recent months and years, they have seen cultural and natural heritage sites, including many World Heritage sites, threatened by wildfires, floods, storms and mass-bleaching events. Climate change puts living heritage – oral traditions, performing arts, social practices, festive events, and traditional knowledge – at risk as well. As climate change leads to displacement and forced migration, entire ways of life risk being lost forever.

While this challenge of Climate Change is monumental, one can also take inspiration from heritage towards climate action. World Heritage properties also harbour options for society to mitigate and adapt to climate change through the ecosystem benefits, such as water and climate regulation. Cultural heritage, on the other hand, can convey traditional knowledge that builds resilience for change to come and leads us to a more sustainable future. It is hence crucial for all generations to help raise awareness of the impacts of climate change on human societies and cultural diversity, biodiversity and ecosystem services, and the world’s natural and cultural heritage.

In this context, we invite young people from around the world to reflect on the pressing issue of Climate Change, its impact on the World Heritage sites around them, and the solutions or measures in their opinion, that would help address these challenges.