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Arcadia

Arcadia serves humanity by preserving endangered cultural heritage and ecosystems.

We protect complexity and work against the entropy of ravaged and thereby starkly simplified natural environments and globalized cultures. Innovation and change occur best in already complex systems. Once memories, knowledge, skills, variety, and intricacy disappear – once the old complexities are lost – they are hard to replicate or replace. Arcadia aims to return to people both their memories and their natural surroundings. What we want to preserve remains fragile, small and dispersed. But if we do not protect it – if it vanishes forever – then future generations will have no base from which to build a vibrant, resilient, green future.

Because knowledge should belong to all, we also promote open access, seeking to make information available without barriers of cost or distance. Charities, businesses, universities, schools, the media, politicians, and citizens all benefit when research and data are no longer locked behind paywalls or reserved for those who live near their repositories. The economy benefits too from better-informed decisions, improved schooling and knowledgeable citizens, from enhanced academic research and innovation based on shared knowledge.

We do not accept applications, but seek and support organizations run by exceptional individuals, operating in a cost-effective, scientifically sound, and ethical manner that share our vision.

Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin

Funder Website

Arcadia Projects

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Documenting the contemporary history of science in India

To collect, preserve and make available online endangered cultural artefacts related to the contemporary (~200 years) history of science in South Asia. It will also develop a …

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Digital Preservation of Kerala Archives

To survey and digitize some of the most important collections of palm-leaf manuscripts in the Thrissur and Ernakulam districts, Kerala, India in both institutional and family …

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Mapping Archaeological Pre-Columbian Heritage in South America

To produce an integrated public access database for the pre-Columbian archaeological heritage of South America, focussing on Brazil and Colombia.

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Documenting Cultural Heritage in the Cook Islands and Niue - Pilot Study

This grant will enable a 6-week field visit to Niue and the Cook Islands in May/June 2023. It is aimed at supporting a proposed larger project which will systematically docume…

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Archive Collage

Understanding Mandate Palestine through the publications and archive of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem

This project digitised 33000 pages of rare books (1619-1950) and archives (1919-1950) from the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, preserving endangered materials on M…

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EAP1402 Pub003

19th-century documents from the Peruvian asylum el Manicomio del Cercado

The Victor Larco Herrera Hospital in the centre of Lima, Peru, was closed in 1917. Its archives, dating back to 1859, consist of medical documentation as well as administrativ…

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EAP1306 Silk Museum

The Caucasian Silk Circle: Digitising Photo Collection of the State Silk Museum in Georgia

The State Silk Museum of Georgia holds the only documentary evidence of the practice of sericulture in the 19th century. Taken during expeditions of the Caucasian Sericulture …

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EAP1294 team

Safeguarding for Posterity Two Private Collections of Palm-Leaf Manuscripts from the Tamil Country

The Kalliṭaikuṟicci and Villiyampākkam collections are palm-leaf collections held privately in India. The collections are essential to study the prevalent reading practices in…

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Digitisation and Diffusion of the Historical Archive of the Institute of Charity "Hermandad De Dolores" (Fraternity of Sorrows), Santiago De Chile

The archive of the Institute of Charity Hermandad de Dolores holds the history of the association from 1815 to the present. These enrich our understanding of Chilean charity i…

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