How can action research inform and support cultural heritage tourism?

That was the topic of a free webinar co-presented by the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage on May 21, 2025. A part of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage and Civil Society Tourism Dialogues Series, this virtual discussion brought together leading specialists in cultural tourism development as they dove into how research and community engagement shape meaningful, respectful, and sustainable experiences.   

The conversation was chaired by Halle Butvin, director of the Center’s Cultural Vitality Program, and highlighted two projects of its Cultural Heritage Tourism Initiative: the Mukhrani Village Experience and My Armenia.

Panelists included Dr. Ruzanna Tsaturyan—a researcher at the Institute of Archaeology and ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences, Armenia; a lecturer at Yerevan State University; and a co-founder of the Culture for Sustainable Development NGO—and Dr. Ketevan Gurchiani, a professor of anthropology and head of the Research Center for Anthropology at Ilia State University in Tbilisi. Michele McKenzie, former president and CEO of Destination Canada and deputy minister of tourism for Nova Scotia, moderated the conversation.

Watch the webinar or read about the discussion and key takeaways below. Interested in learning more? Explore the series!

Mukhrani Village Experience:
Co-Construction and Narrative Dynamics in Mukhrani, Georgia

The Mukhrani Village Experience, presented by Gurchiani, is part of a partnership between the Center and the Regional Development Foundation of Mukhrani, Georgia. Launched in December 2023, the project develops cultural tourism based on living heritage, with an approach rooted in ethnographic research and direct collaboration with local communities. The village of Mukhrani, located near the capital city of Tbilisi, is characterized by its rich cultural heritage: multiethnic, multireligious, and with multiple layers of heritage, it has great potential for tourism, ranging from ancient mosaics to twentieth-century medieval and industrial architecture.

The process was structured in several complementary stages:

• In-depth ethnographic research by a team of two anthropologists and a historian, focusing on local cultural practices and their transmission
• The involvement of young people, with high school students participating in workshops on oral inquiry, visual documentation, and archiving techniques
• Training for local communities, particularly in designing tourist experiences, calculating costs, and communicating and promoting their cultural knowledge
• The development of seven pilot experiments, based on local practices and with the agreement of knowledge holders

These experiences included a dried fruit workshop run by a twenty-two-year-old woman, a horseshoe forging experiment, traditional dance and music classes, food and wine tastings, and a knife-carving workshop run by a young artisan. Each of these activities has been designed to preserve the integrity of traditional practices and avoid any folkloristic or commercial excesses.

Among the most significant results, Gurchiani highlighted the increased competence of participants, the creation of a strong sense of pride and ownership among residents, and the decompartmentalization between generations. The involvement of schoolchildren played a crucial role in building trust with families, facilitating access to family stories and symbolically protected spaces.

As she explained during the dialogue, “If the children trust you, so does the community.”

The Mukhrani Village Experience also revealed tensions related to heritage inclusiveness. In an exercise to map places of heritage value, children and community members identified almost exclusively Orthodox Christian elements, erasing the traces left by other groups (Azeri, German, Armenian, and others). This bias reflects the influence of dominant narratives in the construction of the “official” heritage. The team therefore set about raising awareness of the diversity of heritages and the issues involved in representation.

Finally, particular attention was paid to managing the narratives associated with tourist experiences. A striking example is that of a woman who developed a family culinary offering in symbolic opposition to the neighboring castle. While the castle embodies an elitist, aristocratic narrative, her initiative asserted a different relationship to the history of the area, based on working-class memory and matrilineal transmission. This case illustrates the importance of allowing locals to formulate their own narrative, even when it contradicts institutional heritage discourses.

Gurchiani concluded the segment saying that the Mukhrani Village Experience offered her a rare opportunity to perceive concrete results of her research, often absent in conventional academic work.

“We saw transformations in real time—empowered voices, renewed narratives, and forms of solidarity we hadn’t anticipated,” she said.

This work paves the way for community documentation practices in which research becomes not just a tool for understanding but a lever for empowerment.empowerment.

My Armenia:
Sustainable Development through Collaborative Research

The second project presented in the webinar is the My Armenia program, conducted in Armenia from 2016 to 2020. This multiyear program was initiated by the Center in partnership with the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia, and it included support from USAID. Its goal was to develop community-based cultural tourism products based on living heritage, particularly in rural areas far from the capital.

Tsaturyan was at the heart of the program, playing an active role in the design of tourist experiences and ethnographic research. Her presentation highlighted the methodological foundations of the project; inspired by the anthropological concept of “thick description,” developed by Clifford Geertz, the program was based on dense ethnography, aiming to document in-depth cultural practices, local knowledge, and the lived narratives of communities.

One of the special features of the program was its ability to turn the researcher into a mediator—rather than relying on an outside expert. The bearers of intangible heritage were not only informers but co-creators of experiences. This change in attitude has led to the development of some fifty tourist offerings in fields as varied as craft, gastronomy, rituals, cultural hikes, and regional museums and festivals. The creators paid particular attention to the quality of mediation, including through guides trained in cultural storytelling, ethnographic films created by young people, and participatory museum workshops.

Among the most notable results of the My Armenia program:

• Seventy-two cultural experiences developed in five regions
• Seven museums enriched by ethnographic documentation
• Eight local festivals reoriented to better showcase community knowledge
• Several training modules created for guides, young videographers, and cultural stakeholders

The program culminated in the Armenia: Creating Home program at the 2018 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., featuring lively craft, performance, and foodways demonstrations based on the team’s research. Tsaturyan stressed the importance of not creating a frozen image of intangible cultural heritage—on the contrary, the project aimed to show living heritage in action, through everyday, contextualized, and embodied practices.

Asked about building trust with communities, Tsaturyan recalled that researchers, though familiar with the field, also had to negotiate their legitimacy. At the start of the project, they had to rely on their own professional reputations and build the credibility of the program. This dual recognition—of the researcher and the project—was earned through quality commitment, transparency, and respect for community voices. For Tsaturyan, this work was also an ethical responsibility.

“We researchers have a narrative power that can shape the way traditions are understood, valued, or forgotten,” she said. “We have to share this power.”

In her presentation, a particularly revealing example concerned the question of memorial narratives. In a village populated by Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan, the team had planned a winemaking presentation through the prism of displacement and memory. But the young man behind the initiative expressed a different desire: he didn’t want to be defined by his displaced past but by his identity as a citizen rooted in the territory, a player in the present, and a creator of value. The researchers reoriented the story to center contemporary rootedness, perfectly illustrating the negotiation dynamics inherent in action research.

Another case study concerned the Vardavar festival. In this joyful Armenian tradition, people of all ages splash water on one another to celebrate love, renewal, and the Feast of the Transfiguration. Although it has strong tourist potential, the local community has expressed its wish to preserve it as an intimate family event. Rather than forcing its integration into tourism, the team respected this decision, showing that not all heritage needs to be, nor should be, made visible or monetized.

As for the sustainability of the results, many of the tourism experiences created as part of the project are still active and constantly evolving, supported by trained tradition bearers capable of adapting and renewing their offerings. Tsaturyan and her team stayed in touch with the communities and continued to document local developments and transformations.

The My Armenia project demonstrated that ethnographic action research, when carried out with rigor, patience, and respect, can not only produce authentic, grounded tourism offerings but also strengthen local capacities, nurture collective narratives, and preserve the social and cultural balance of territories.

Cross-Reflections and Teachings

The Mukhrani Village Experience and My Armenia programs offer two powerful and complementary examples of how action research can be a tool in the development of sustainable cultural tourism, rooted in living heritage. Although the contexts differ, the two approaches share fundamental principles: a participatory approach, a desire to co-create with communities, and a strong focus on the ethical responsibility of both the researcher and the tourism developer.

In both cases, the action-research methodology proved to be a transformative lever, not only in the design of authentic and sensitive tourism experiences but also in the social dynamics it triggered. In Mukhrani, this approach has helped to initiate a process of reappropriation of identity and valorization of forgotten stories while engaging the younger generation in the documentation and transmission of their heritage. In Armenia, it has helped build sustainable experiences that include the voices of tradition bearers, while strengthening local capacities for the long term.

These projects also show that living heritage is not an inert resource to be “turned into tourism” but a fabric of practices, narratives, and social relationships that need to be treated with care. Both panelists stressed the risks of decontextualization, standardization, and instrumentalization associated with a non-collaborative approach to tourism. They also stressed the importance of creating spaces where communities can express what should and shouldn’t be shown, and under what conditions.

These initiatives are a reminder that making tourism an ally of intangible heritage takes time, listening, and constant reflection. They open concrete avenues for other players wishing to implement similar approaches. They also set out a clear ethical framework: truly sustainable tourism is one that is built with communities, at their pace, and respecting their right to define the contours of their heritage and hospitality themselves.

Key Takeaways

To develop sustainable tourism projects based on intangible cultural heritage, it is essential to:

• Adopt a collaborative action-research approach during the project’s design stage. Action research enables us to co-construct tourism experiences with communities, based on their needs, stories, and priorities. This means spending time in the field, training and raising the awareness of local players, and considering heritage owners as full partners. This method reinforces the relevance and sustainability of our actions.
• Respect the limits set by communities. Don’t turn everything into a tourist experience. Not all cultural practices are intended to be shared with visitors. It is crucial to recognize these limits and not circumvent them under the pretext of profitability or “authenticity.”
• Actively work on narratives and representations. Projects must enable communities to define their own heritage narratives without imposing on them narratives that are victim-based, exoticized, or disconnected from their current reality. This implies a reflexive posture on the part of researchers and constant attention to the dynamics of exclusion or eraser (ethnic minorities, displaced memories, etc.).
• Create conditions of trust through local partners. Partnerships with national research institutions, local NGOs, or schools can facilitate the integration of the project and increase its legitimacy. Involving young people or community leaders facilitates acceptance of the project, access to knowledge, and strengthens the territorial anchoring of the approach.

Océane Lesot works on international projects at Workshop Intangible Heritage (Werkplaats immaterieel erfgoed), a UNESCO-accredited NGO recognized as Flanders’ main organization for safeguarding living heritage and a cultural broker connecting public authorities, institutions, communities, and researchers. At Workshop Intangible Heritage, she supports cross-border initiatives and contributes to research-informed publications on participatory safeguarding, museums, and sustainable development. Workshop Intangible Heritage co-manages the Flemish ICH platform immaterieelerfgoed.be with the Flemish government and plays an active role in the ICH NGO Forum, including in the ICH & Sustainable Tourism working group and its web dossier. Océane is also involved in developing FLAME, a European initiative to build a regional hub for living-heritage collaboration.