DOHA: Across the region, the argument for culture has shifted. It is no longer enough to say heritage matters; we are asked to show what it does. Saudi Arabia named 2025 its Year of Handicrafts and Qatar has used its Years of Culture program since 2012 to build lasting ties with partner nations. This year’s partner, Mexico, has shown that craft never stopped being both heritage and livelihood. When chef Elena Reygadas, whose Rosetta restaurant in Mexico City holds a Michelin star, kicks off her culinary residency at MIHAD Gallery from Nov. 4 to 15, it will be the first in a rotating chef-in-residence program at a gallery. Reygadas is positioned as a creative collaborator in the gallery’s program, not as a food vendor. Her team from Mexico City will bake on site. The setting is furnished with hand-produced ceramics and lighting by Mexican designer Perla Valtierra. That is the point. Culture done well creates income for makers, footfall for neighborhoods and repeat audiences for institutions. It is an economy, and it deserves to be designed like one. “Expanded Tradition: Contemporary Craft Practices in Mexico,” open at M7 until Dec. 26, 2026, makes the case through a simple curatorial decision. Curator Ana Elena Mallet credits every object to a named maker and a place. Taller Carmen Tapia in Taxco, working in forged and cast silver. Taller Familiar Iztaccualli Rangel in Zapopan, working in filigree. The Netzahualcoyotl family workshop in Tlaxcala, weaving wool dyed with cochineal, indigo and pericon. The exhibition is made possible through the generous participation and collaboration of the Government of Mexico, through the Ministry of Culture and the National Fund for the Development of Arts and Crafts. That highlights the makers as authors and keepers of their own stories and heritage, rejecting the common anonymous “artisans” moniker. A name is the beginning of a market. It lets a collector commission, a designer collaborate, and a young craft maker image a career. It also tackles the contemporary questions they face about how authorship, and the resulting global exposure, can positively impact the strength of local economies. Fernando Laposse offers one of the clearest, and most successful, models. His studio, whose work is held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, develops new materials from corn husk, sisal (agave plant fiber) and loofah. It then teaches those techniques to the farming community of Tonahuixtla in southern Mexico, so design becomes a source of employment that helps revitalise traditional agriculture. In Doha, visitors can walk through that model. “The Sower,” Laposse’s installation at Fareej Al-Asmakh, curated by Mario Ballesteros, moves through past, present and future. The past is told through pearls and cochineal, two natural resources, and two bodies of ancestral knowledge, that once connected Qatar and Mexico to world trade. The present is agave, corn and avocado, worked into a dining table of corn husk and cabinets of avocado skin and agave. The future is a seed library of 100 urns; visitors can lift one, scan it and watch a short documentary about the seed it holds. It is a quiet but pointed reminder that the raw material of tomorrow’s design economy is being planted, or lost, today. “The Sower” also reflects how the Biennial approaches its own region. Design Doha Biennial has built a system for safeguarding the ancestral knowledge of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia region, treating traditional technologies as living design intelligence. Regional curators ground the work in research. We select designers rooted in artisanal practice and commission them to document each technique and the conditions that shaped it, from the materials found locally to the tools at hand. Every process is then recorded with the artisans who hold it so it remains an open resource long after the biennial closes. For Qatar, these models speak directly to a national ambition for a cultural sector that is credible and sustainable over the long term. Qatar’s creative districts are fast becoming the working infrastructure of the region’s art and design economy, connecting collectors, designers, hospitality and emerging Qatari talent. The question is not Qatar’s alone — from Riyadh to Rabat, the region is investing in its makers, and every one of those investments faces the same test to decide if heritage can move from the display case to the workshop, and from the workshop to a sustainable income. Fahad Al-Obaidly is the director of Design Doha Biennial, which runs at Fareej Al-Asmakh from Nov. 5 to Dec. 31, 2026.