Dept of Culture & Tourism UAE:
Designing an apprenticeship program for next gen culture bearers
The Challenge
The UAE’s intangible cultural heritage, its oral traditions, crafts, rituals and performing arts, risks being lost within a generation as the country modernizes. The national schools curriculum builds awareness of heritage, but awareness alone doesn’t keep a craft alive. DCT needed a pathway that takes learners from appreciation to true mastery, so heritage is practiced and passed on, not just remembered.
Methods
Programme design, prototyping, learner journey mapping, stakeholder alignment, ethnographic research
The Process
We started in the field, interviewing master practitioners, tradition bearers, young learners and educators to understand how mastery of a craft is actually passed on, and where that chain is breaking. Alongside this, we studied global models of heritage apprenticeship, and the cognitive science of how skills deepen from novice to expert.
Learners progress through structured levels under the mentorship of recognized masters, with hands-on practice, storytelling and community showcases at each stage.
We prototyped the apprenticeship model with practitioners and learners, refined it with their feedback, and defined how mastery would be recognized and certified.
Finally, we brought stakeholders across the UAE’s culture and education ecosystem onto one shared model for keeping living heritage alive.
Keywords
Cultural heritage, Learning experience design, Public sector, Nation building
For more information, reach out to me directly.