A Commonwealth of National Trusts?

With the 2014 Commonwealth Games about to start in Glasgow, we here at INTO have been reflecting on the nature of this organisation today – and how it intersects with the National Trust movement.

The modern Commonwealth is an organisation which promotes democracy across the world, standing as a force for good within the global community.   There are echoes of this in the National Trust movement as heritage trusts can play a significant role in the development of civil society by raising community understanding and developing community response.   We have seen powerful examples of this in the education programmes run by Trusts in the Caribbean, Malta and India.

It is no coincidence that many INTO member trusts are from countries also belonging to the Commonwealth – common language, common legal system, common bonds, common values.    And yet, like the Commonwealth, INTO is adapting to embrace new countries, new approaches and new notions of heritage.  The National Trust movement is rooted in the North and West, but there is a growing and powerful conservation movement in the South and East that thinks about heritage differently and our 2013 Conference in Uganda helped redress that imbalance and enable INTO to broaden its understanding of global heritage priorities.

Like the Commonwealth and the European Union, INTO offers smaller nations the opportunity to have their views and opinions heard on an international stage.

Il Maghluq Saltmarsh Clean up, Nature Trust (Malta)

Last week, I had a long conversation with Vincent Attard, Executive President of the Nature Trust (Malta), one of our newish INTO member organisations.  It was great to hear first-hand about the Trust’s excellent work in site management, education, wildlife rescue and advocacy.  As one of the few countries to be both part of the EU and the Commonwealth, it was interesting to learn more about their relationship with the European Commission, from whom they receive some grant funding and which regards the Trust as an honest and trusted adviser.  The Nature Trust is particularly keen to learn from the INTO expert network about membership development.

Our newest INTO members are the Barbados National Trust.  Established in 1961, the Trust works to preserve and protect the natural and artistic heritage of Barbados and to increase public awareness of the island’s historic and architectural treasures.  These include a number of different cemeteries, gardens, historic houses, nature reserves, park areas, windmills and coastal areas. The Trust also runs museums displaying artefacts owned and made by Barbadians, as well as an education programme, focusing on the island’s history and what it means to the future.  The Barbados National Trust recently hosted a gathering of National Trusts in the Caribbean, which provided an excellent forum for sharing and learning at a regional level.

Gun Hill, Barbados National Trust

The modern Commonwealth undoubtedly has a special relationship to the UK, but it is an association of equal members from all over the globe and now includes members that were never even British colonies.   It would be pretentious to compare INTO to the Commonwealth but with the National Trust of England, Wales and Northern Ireland having inspired the establishment of directly modelled National Trusts throughout the world, a need was seen to create a supranational platform through which to provide professional advice and coordination between the Trusts.  Thus INTO was born.

So, on the eve of the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, we remember the first International Conference of National Trusts (ICNT) hosted by the National Trust for Scotland in 1978, which brought together the Trusts of the world for the first time – many of them from the Commonwealth.  We jump forward to the 10th ICNT and its ‘Edinburgh Declaration’ of 2003 which set out the parameters for INTO.  And we look ahead to the Cambridge ICNT in September 2015 which will review progress since Edinburgh and seek to strengthen INTO’s position at the heart of the global National Trust movement, now reaching well beyond its early Commonwealth footprint.