UNESCO and Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism closed a five-day training workshop in Al Ain on 25 September 2026, the eighth edition of a joint capacity-building series aimed at helping the UAE meet its obligations under the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The workshop, titled “Community-Based Inventorying for the Sustainable Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage”, ran from 21 to 25 September and drew forty participants from cultural institutions, government entities, research bodies and heritage practice across the UAE. Its mandate was specific: deepen national competence in community-based inventorying, which organizers frame not as a recordkeeping exercise but as a foundation of safeguarding living heritage.
Additional reference context is available at https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/unesco-and-dct-abu-dhabi-launch-eighth-capacity-building-workshop-community-based-inventorying.
That framing carries weight for anyone tracking how state institutions discharge treaty obligations. Inventorying, under this model, functions as a dynamic instrument for continuity and transmission rather than a static register. It depends, organizers insist, on active involvement from the communities that create, maintain and pass down the traditions being catalogued.
Sessions worked through UNESCO’s methodological framework for community-based work: principles, standards and ethical requirements meant to guarantee meaningful participation by heritage bearers at every stage, from gathering information to validating records and keeping them current. Facilitators built on earlier rounds of the series, pushing participants to treat an inventory as an operational safeguarding mechanism rather than an end point. The agenda covered community engagement, inclusive representation, ethics, Free, Prior and Informed Consent (known as FPIC), and how inventory data feeds into wider safeguarding policy, cultural planning and sustainability strategy.
Delivery followed UNESCO’s standard participatory model: expert lectures paired with hands-on exercises, group discussion, international case studies and field activity. A published overview situates the workshop within the broader cooperation agenda between UNESCO and DCT Abu Dhabi, available at unesco.org/en/articles/unesco-and-dct-abu-dhabi-launch-eighth-capacity-building-workshop-community-based-inventorying.
Instructional responsibility rested with two accredited trainers from UNESCO’s Global Facilitators Network for Intangible Cultural Heritage, Dr. Hani Hayajneh of Jordan and Dr. Ahmed Skounti of Morocco. Specialist input came from Jawida Mansour of the UNESCO Regional Office for the Gulf States and Yemen and Meeza Obaid of UNESCO’s AlUla Project, both drawing on experience from collaborative projects with local communities in Pakistan.
Much of the week went toward practical skill-building. Attendees trained in interview technique, participant observation, focus-group methods, photography, audiovisual recording and participatory mapping, then tested those tools during structured fieldwork with host communities in Al Ain. That fieldwork phase surfaced real obstacles and openings encountered directly with heritage custodians.
The workshop also served as a checkpoint on recent results under the convention. Several Emirati entries have joined UNESCO’s Representative List recently: Alheda’a, the Bisht, the traditional wedding procession known as Zaffa, and Arabic Kohl. Separately, Al Sadu weaving moved off the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding and onto the Representative List, a transition officials point to as evidence that national and regional protective mechanisms are functioning as intended.
Timing added resonance. With the International Day of Intangible Cultural Heritage falling on 17 October, closing discussions stressed public education around living heritage as a pillar of identity, pluralism, social cohesion and durable growth, alongside the point that communities themselves hold decisive responsibility for keeping traditions alive and adaptive.
Final sessions turned to accountability questions: how systematic listing supports early risk detection, proportionate responses, and deeper coordination among communities, DCT Abu Dhabi, UNESCO and other stakeholders. A recurring view among participants held that success should be measured less by the tally of recorded items than by whether ordinary citizens gain genuine authority over recognizing, honoring and defending their own inherited knowledge.
Both organizations closed by restating mutual commitments: build domestic capability, widen grassroots involvement, and pursue new techniques for protecting intangible heritage nationwide. Whether the ninth edition of this series moves those commitments from pledge to measurable practice remains the open question.