Mongolia’s Living Heritage Becomes a Classroom in the Orkhon Valley

Discussions with the Protection Administration of the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape grounded the fieldwork in the demands of managing the property.

Protecting a historic landscape takes more than knowing how to care for old buildings, especially in a place where music, craftsmanship and nomadic traditions remain part of everyday life. That connection shaped a six-day Field School in Mongolia's Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape, where 16 participants worked with two international heritage management experts from 2 to 7 September 2026. Organised through the Mongolian Heritage Programme (MHP), the experience gave participants a chance to put their training to work at a UNESCO World Heritage property and understand the decisions facing the people responsible for its protection.

Learning from the Landscape and Its People

Visits to Khushuu Tsaidam, Khar Balgas, Erdene Zuu Monastery, the Open-Air Museum and Ulaan Tsutgalan Waterfall introduced participants to the valley's varied historical, cultural and environmental features. Their work involved assessing and mapping heritage attributes, examining pressures on the property and considering how different places contribute to its significance. Seeing these locations within the wider landscape encouraged participants to look beyond individual monuments and explore the relationships between historic sites, the natural environment and the communities whose lives are rooted there.

A visit to a nomadic household and exchanges with practitioners of traditional embroidery, throat singing, horse-head fiddle music and felt-making brought another dimension to those discussions. These encounters offered a first-hand view of knowledge and skills sustained through everyday practice, giving participants a clearer understanding of why heritage management must account for people as well as places. The experience placed tangible and intangible heritage within the same conversation, connecting the care of physical sites with respect for the traditions that continue to give the valley meaning.

Facing the Practical Questions of Protection

Discussions with the Protection Administration of the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape grounded the fieldwork in the demands of managing the property. Participants learned about protection, documentation, monitoring and management planning, gaining insight into the practical constraints that shape conservation decisions. Signs of deterioration and erosion at certain sites drew attention to the need for continued conservation, and the proposed New Kharkhorin city prompted consideration of how emerging development could affect the wider landscape. These observations made the task of safeguarding the valley more concrete, requiring participants to consider both visible damage and pressures that need careful assessment.

Four working groups turned those observations into recommendations covering community engagement, heritage interpretation and education, tourism and visitor management, and disaster risk and climate action. Their findings will contribute to an Integrated Management Proposal for the property, connecting assessments of its heritage attributes with the factors affecting them and possible management responses. Developing those recommendations required participants to draw on what they had seen and heard, including the experiences of local practitioners and communities, and explain how their proposals addressed conditions on the ground.

Building Mongolia's Next Generation of Heritage Professionals

The Field School was the third of four components in the MHP's 2025–2026 capacity-building programme for its first cohort. Jointly implemented by the UNESCO Regional Office for East Asia and the Mongolian National University of Arts and Culture, the initiative receives support from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, Tourism and Youth and the Mongolian National Commission for UNESCO. Its longer-term vision is a dedicated degree programme in cultural heritage management, extending opportunities to develop the skills needed to care for Mongolia's heritage.

For participants, the Orkhon Valley experience made clear how closely conservation decisions are connected to community life, environmental conditions and development. L. Otgonbayar, director of the property's Protection Administration, placed the programme alongside other heritage initiatives during the 440th anniversary year of Erdene Zuu Monastery and the 70th anniversary of Kharkhorin soum. He described that timing as an opportunity to strengthen heritage management and local capacity, a prospect reflected in the participants' work to turn learning into practical proposals for the valley's future.