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ICH Tourism dialogues: conversations on Living Heritage and Tourism

By July 7, 2024February 24th, 2026No Comments

Interdisciplinary Conversations on Living Heritage and Tourism

Following the avenues opened up for dialogue and collaborations among diverse stakeholders by the web dossier on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Sustainable Tourism, the ICH NGO Forum Working Group on sustainable ICH Tourism holds a series of conversations looking to expand the scope of our understanding of the relationship between ICH and tourism.

The ICH Tourism Dialogues bring together scholars and ICH practitioners along with people from NGOs, tourism agencies and the tourism industry representing localities, regions and national governments to talk about the benefits and challenges of this relationship from different perspectives.  

Dialogue about issues of economic development,  tourism studies, cultural resources management, the relationships of historic preservation and the protection of monuments with ICH,  environmental sustainability and perspectives from the social sciences can enrich this discussion.  

The ICH Tourism Dialogues share the experiences of diverse types of institutions and key actors in the field that have developed successful and sometimes not-so-successful projects for promoting tourism related to cultural traditions and practices.  These conversations further enrich and develop the web dossier for its multiple users, and contribute to the ongoing exercise on what to do when ICH and tourism meet.

Upcoming Dialogues

We are excited to announce that new ICH Tourism Dialogues will be held throughout 2026. A detailed calendar will be published very soon.

Stay tuned for updates on dates, speakers, and registration details. We look forward to continuing these enriching exchanges with you!


Pasted Dialogues

Below is a list of the dialogues that have already taken place. Click on each title to access the event page, where you will find recordings, reports, and additional materials:

Dialogue#6
Dialogue with Prof. dr. Noël Salazar (Professor in Social and Cultural Anthropology and Founder of the Cultural Mobilities Research (CuMoRe) cluster at KU Leuven)
Dialogue#5
Dialogue with Dr. Ivan Henares, President of ICOMOS International Cultural Tourism Committee (ICTC)
Dialogue#4
Dialogue with with Ruzanna Tsaturyan (My Armenia Program), Ketevan Gurchiani (Georgia), and moderated by Michele McKenzie (international Tourism expert, Canada)
Dialogue#3
Dialogue with Costanza Fidelbo (Associate Programme Specialist at the Culture Unit of the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Science and Culture in Europe)
Dialogue#2
Dialogue with Kaat de Ridder (Tourism researcher and lecturer at Thomas More University of Applied Sciences (Belgium))
Dialogue#1
Dialogue with Halle Butvin (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage)
Download the 2024 programme

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