The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) approved in June 2026 funding worth $99,700 for a project aimed at preserving the skills of manual Syrian glassblowing and passing them on to future generations, as part of a 36-month community project implemented by the Syrian Development Organization.
This decision comes in the context of continuous efforts to preserve intangible cultural heritage, as the organization warned that the craft faces real threats related to the declining number of remaining artisans and the absence of organized training programs, necessitating the provision of conditions that allow artisans to continue working and train new apprentices.
For his part, Minister of Culture Mohammad Yassin Al-Saleh emphasized in his article "Folk Heritage, the Spirit of Place, and Its Living Memory" the importance of preserving the arts, crafts, social practices, and traditions left by ancestors from extinction, stressing the responsibility of transmitting this heritage to future generations with love and awareness to ensure its continuity.
Rola Aqili, Director of the Directorate of Intangible Cultural Heritage at the Ministry of Culture, added that the Syrian experience gave special importance to documenting heritage to involve local communities as the true carriers of heritage and traditional knowledge, considering them a fundamental entry point for its protection and sustainability.
She pointed out that documentation and involving artisans and artists represent a fundamental aspect of preservation efforts, because heritage knowledge is not reduced to a written description or archival image, but is linked to practice, accumulated experience, and the social environment in which it originated and continued through it.
In a related context, the Ministry of Culture signed a memorandum of understanding with the Rawaq Forum for Syrian Heritage in January 2026 to support the documentation of tangible and intangible heritage. Syria also participated in the Regional Forum on Inventorying Craft Traditions in the Arab World, organized by the Arab Organization for Education, Culture and Science (ALECSO), with the participation of seven Arab countries.
Field preservation plans intersect with national programs for digital archiving and documenting the National Atlas of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Syria, aiming to build a visual and oral database to inventory crafts and folk arts in cooperation with faculties of arts and higher language institutes.
Source: Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)
Comments (0)