Gulf boosts cultural programmes

Saudi Arabia is not just funding museums anymore. In April 2026, its Ministry of Culture rolled out a public “Cultural Experiences” program with hands-on cooking and handicraft sessions in Riyadh, Al-Baha, Jazan, and Al-Ahsa, turning heritage into something people do, not just visit. (english.aawsat.com) The first track is called “Cooking Experiences,” and it is being held at Hotel and Tourism Management Institute Saudi Arabia sites in April 2026. The second is “Handicraft Experiences,” with workshops on pottery, palm-frond weaving, and Asiri Al-Qatt, the colorful wall art tradition from southern Saudi Arabia. (english.aawsat.com) That same push is showing up at the institutional level too. In February 2026, Saudi Arabia and the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage signed an agreement to open the group’s first regional headquarters in Riyadh, giving the Geneva-based heritage rescue body a permanent base in the Gulf. (spa.gov.sa) The International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage was created in 2017 to protect cultural sites and collections damaged by war, crisis, and natural disasters. Saudi Arabia has been a member since that 2017 launch, so the Riyadh office is an expansion of an existing relationship, not a one-off sponsorship. (spa.gov.sa) Riyadh is also not a random choice on the map. Saudi officials have been pushing the capital as a regional headquarters city across sectors, and culture is now joining finance, consulting, and technology in that same hub strategy. (circuit.news) Inside Saudi Arabia, this sits under a much bigger state buildout. The Ministry of Culture says its job is to regulate and grow fields from visual art and theater to music, literature, and heritage, which means workshops for school-age visitors and international heritage agreements are being run by the same central machine. (saudipedia.com) You can see the pattern in recent programming. In March and April 2026, the ministry ran a Traditional Arts Festival in Diriyah and, in April 2026, launched a “Cultural Hub” platform to gather Saudi cultural resources in one place, so the new experiences program lands in a pipeline that is already producing festivals, archives, and public-facing events. (msn.com) (spa.gov.sa) The result is that the Gulf is becoming a place where heritage is packaged at two speeds at once. One speed is local and tactile, like a pottery table or a cooking class in Al-Baha, and the other is diplomatic and global, like hosting a crisis-heritage organization that usually works around damaged monuments and museum collections. (english.aawsat.com) (arabnews.com) That combination changes who the region is in the cultural economy. Instead of acting only as a buyer of exhibitions, films, and prestige projects, Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a producer, a convener, and a host for the infrastructure that decides which stories, crafts, and sites get preserved and circulated. (arabnews.com) (spa.gov.sa)