GCDN Annual Convening – Doha 2026

In many places, cultural prestige has long been signalled through Western canons and global contemporary circuits, while heritage practices and traditional crafts were pushed to the side as tourism attractions or symbolic backdrop. At the same time, local contemporary artists have often been drawing on their own histories, techniques, and materials, with or without institutional backing. That balance is shifting. Cultural leaders are increasingly treating heritage as a live source for contemporary work, and asking artists and communities to carry it forward.

This breakout asks what it means to build that shift into policy and long-term strategy. What does it look like to centre heritage in ways that strengthen ecosystems, leave room for artistic risk, and still speak to diverse publics? And what kinds of long-term commitments, governance arrangements, and investment choices are needed for this turn to the past to genuinely reshape how places present themselves to their own publics and to the world? In other words, how do past and present connect in ways that shape the future on their own terms?