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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

Eap 1114

Preserving Pious Print: digitising early Islamic print in the Maalim Muhammad Idris Collection, Zanzibar, Tanzania

The Maalim Idris Library is the most extensive holding of early Islamic printed material in Tanzania. The material is crucial to understand the social, cultural and religious …

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Eap 1106

Preservation of the unique heritage: manuscripts and books in private collections of Old Believers of Transbaikalia

The literature of Transbaikalia’s Old Believers defines the identity of the Russian population in a multicultural and polyconfessional region. The preservation of this materia…

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Private records of the leading business families of Early Colonial Bengal

Bengal had a rich tradition of commodity production, trade and commerce in the pre-colonial and the early colonial period. The archival records of the families with such leadi…

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Eap 1100

Survey of archival material in small Jewish communities in rural areas in Argentina: south Buenos Aires province and La Pampa province

Between the 19th and 20th century, 200,000 Jewish migrants from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean arrived in Argentina. Archives of small villages show how immigrants manag…

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Eap 1094

Endangered Libraries In Timbuktu

When the Jihadist occupation began in 2012, hundreds of thousands manuscripts were smuggled out of Timbuktu to Bamako. However, a small but important minority of the owners di…

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Eap 1086

Preserving and Digitising the Historic Newspaper, The Barbados Mercury Gazette

The Barbados Mercury and Bridgetown Gazette - a newspaper printed bi-weekly in Barbados, West Indies, from 1783 to 1839 - is a resource in the recovery of the identities of en…

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Recovering the rich local history of Kita (Mali) through the salvaging of its archival heritage

The Kita district was the oldest colonial district in Mali. Located at the crossroads of several trade routes, the cosmopolitan region was a refugee zone that welcomed populat…

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Eap 1077

Preservation of Tibetan Bonpo Manuscripts in Amdo (Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, PRC)

Compared to Tibetan Buddhism, Bon is still a niche topic of study that is emerging to the attention of an increasing number of scholars. Ngakpa (ritual experts) normally live …

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Eap 1065

Public High Schools Archives of Chile, Digitisation for their rescue, preservation and dissemination

Public secondary education in Chile was founded in 1813. The schools helped to educate the political elites of the Republic of Chile and constitute the Republic’s early educat…

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