After ten years of success, the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund (CPF) has been extended to 2029. Here Stephanie Grant explains the work of the Fund and why it is important to everyone around the world.
The Cultural Protection Fund’s three-year extension to 2029 marks a new chapter for the fund. It’s brilliant news and means that thousands more people and communities worldwide will benefit from UK support to protect valuable cultural heritage that could otherwise be destroyed, lost and forgotten. But as the world faces a convergence of humanitarian emergencies, with hundreds of millions of people living without access to food and healthcare, is it important to protect cultural heritage? And given the consistently gloomy reports about the fragile state of the UK’s and other economies, is this a good time to invest in heritage?
My answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes.
The Cultural Protection Fund, a partnership between the British Council and the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport, was set up in 2016 in response to the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage in Iraq and Syria. Now in its tenth year, the fund has awarded £56m to 160 projects in 20 countries protecting culturally important architecture, historical sites and relics as well as living heritage such as languages, music, recipes and traditions.
Over the last ten years, we have been consistently overwhelmed with demand. In 2024, I wrote The world is on fire, so why should we care about cultural heritage? Unfortunately, what remains unchanged is that heritage is increasingly targeted during conflict through the destruction of sacred places and the attempted suppression of people’s traditions and identities. Heritage also faces major threats from climate change-related events, which threaten physical heritage and force communities from where they live, restricting them from passing on traditions and knowledge to the next generation.
In the fund’s last open calls, CPF received over 1000 expressions of interest, and now, in 2026, the need for our programme is greater than ever.
In a recent DCMS funding announcement, UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said, "At a time when forces seek to divide us, arts, culture and heritage are what bind us together". £1.5 billion will be invested in cultural organisations over five years in the UK. The Cultural Protection Fund is how the UK supports the protection of culture and heritage overseas. It protects heritage that is precious to the communities closest to it, because all heritage is valuable to the world. It is million-year-old footprints that reveal the truth about the evolution of our species. It’s the songs and dances with the power to become tools for political resistance. It’s ancient knowledge on how to make medicine from plants and herbs. If it is lost, it’s a loss for all of us.
CPF is funded by the UK government’s Official Development Assistance (ODA), which exists to support the economic development and welfare of developing countries. CPF remains a tiny proportion of the UK’s ODA – CPF will receive just under £3m in 2026/27, less than 0.03% of the expected £10 billion ODA spend in that year.
Although a small development programme, the CPF has a big impact. The fund encourages local decision-making and leadership, embedding capacity that has a sustainable impact on communities and their ability to advocate and care for their heritage. Alongside this, we have evidence that heritage protection leads to improvements in wellbeing and resilience as well as economic stability and recovery.
The UK government plans to reduce its ODA spending from 0.5% of Gross National Income to 0.3% by 2027, and the CPF is not exempt from this reduction. The renewed three-year programme will operate with a significantly reduced budget. But even though we’re faced with the enormous challenge of dwindling resources against increasing need, the Cultural Protection Fund is looking to the future with optimism and determination.
In the renewed Cultural Protection Fund:
• We will take on stewardship of the Culture in Crisis programme, which will connect people and organisations from 185 countries, sharing knowledge and insight and platforming hidden voices and stories.
• We will launch seven pioneering projects which explore innovative digital solutions for safeguarding cultural heritage.
• We will continue to work collaboratively with other organisations from across a network of heritage protection funders from the UK, EU and the US, to advocate for the importance of protecting cultural heritage in a fragmented world.
There is much to do, it is a shared global responsibility, and the time to act is now.