Stepping INTO the breach
IN 1844, a group of archaeologists, students and artists eager to preserve the cultural patrimony of Norway established Fortidsminneforeningen, meaning the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Monuments or the National Trust of Norway. This organisation now maintains more than 40 sites, including eight stave churches, several monastic ruins, a castle and much else besides across the country. It has also just become the 100th— as well as the oldest—member of a relatively recent global network that Athena thinks ought to be better known: the International National Trusts Organisation (INTO).
INTO is an independent organisation that operates under the administrative umbrella of the National Trust. It was first established in December 2007 as a body of 12 international members that intended to share expertise in maintaining cultural heritage and the natural world. Within its first year, the organisation almost doubled in size and its global membership has continued to grow steadily since then. It now extends across 70 nations and territories, from the National Trust of Georgia, set up in 2016, to the National Trust of Zimbabwe, by way of fellow heritage organisations as far afield as Fiji, St Helena and the Falklands Islands.
The organisation runs a small grants programme, TAP INTO, and is also engaged in focused projects. The largest to date is the restoration of six properties—in Uganda, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan and Zanzibar, each one now twinned with a National Trust property—threatened by climate change, with the support of £1.6 million from the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund. In addition to these undertakings, however, it has another mission.
One of the greatest fears for small organisations is that people don’t care
As the secretary-general of INTO, Catherine Leonard, explains: ‘The coalition members are brilliant at looking after their cultural and natural heritage, but aren’t always able to make their properties financially viable or create the institutional structures that will maintain them for the long term. That’s something we can help through a new leadership training programme, funded by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, online courses and sharing information through exchanges supported by travel grants.’
She goes on to explain that, although many of the organisations with the network have been inspired by the National Trust, their resources and responsibilities are vastly different. They need to be inventive and versatile to survive. ‘One of the greatest fears for small organisations,’ she adds, ‘is that people don’t care about their activities. Hopefully, we can help amplify what they do. My ambition is to create citizens’ movements in the different places we work that will support them.’ What the arrival of this 100th member of INTO (www.into.org) makes clear is that this network has achieved a critical mass. It’s also a reminder that, for all the huge amount that the National Trust itself has achieved since its foundation in 1895, there were people determined to work for the preservation of cultural heritage decades even before that.