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British Council Cultural Protection Fund in partnership with DCMS

The British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund, set up in partnership with the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, is directly responding to the threat to cultural heritage in and around the Middle East and North Africa, whilst promoting opportunities for sustainable social and economic development in the region. Utilising £30m in Official Development Assistance from the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the Cultural Protection Fund offers grants to organisations to deliver projects that protect, record, conserve and restore cultural heritage at risk. In doing so, we are creating opportunities for sustainable development through providing skills; increasing capacity in the heritage workforce; and supporting communities to better understand, value and benefit from their heritage. Grants have been awarded to 51 initiatives taking place across the region. By 2020, over 3000 people in the cultural heritage sector will have received training and developed new skills as part of CPF projects and thousands of new records for threatened heritage sites have been created and are being monitored across the region. Over 10,000 people have undertaken activities that increase understanding of, or engagement with, cultural heritage.

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British Council Cultural Protection Fund in partnership with DCMS Projects

Instruments Making Program by AFH 2

On the Tracks of Music - Folk Music in the Levant and Mesopotamia

This project will preserve and promote the disappearing traditional folk music and musical instruments of marginalised rural communities, in areas severely affected by conflic…

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Site locations

Athar Lina Heritage Climate Change: Conservation and Capacity Building

This project will oversee the protection of Yahya al-Shabih and Safiyy al-Din Jawhar.

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The Crows Eye c Omar Malas via Ettijahat

Safeguarding endangered oral traditions and minority heritages in Syria

This project will safeguard a wide range of Syrian intangible heritage, including oral traditions, folk stories and proverbs which are central to communities’ identities.

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Kasr Kabaw Anna Leonephoto 1

Partnership for Heritage: Safeguarding Traditional Architecture and Intangible heritage of Tataouine (Tunisia) and the Nafusa mountains (Libya)

This project will document the rich and varied heritage of the indigenous Imazighen communities living in the Nafusa Mountains (Libya) and in Tataouine, Tunisia.

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EAMENA 1

EAMENA: Mitigating Conflict and Climate Change Risks Through Digital Heritage, Capacity Building, and Consolidation

This project will build upon the transformative work undertaken by the EAMENA project across the Middle East and North Africa, working with national NGOs and governments to em…

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Faza Island North Kenya Coast Photo by Nafisa Awadh used with permission

Safeguarding the cultural heritage of the Bajuni dialect of Swahili, oral traditions and poetry

This project will record and document the Bajuni dialect spoken by more than 15,000 people.

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Fadi Jabo Iraq

Middle East People’s Culture Conservation Collective

This project will empower young people across Syria, Iraq and Egypt to protect the heritage of marginalised religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities within their own commun…

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Uganda

Withstanding change: heritage amongst climate uncertainty

Led by the International National Trusts Organisation, this project will restore six historic buildings in six countries across the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa, …

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4 Spiritual leader performs a mountain cleansing ritual at the Nzwiranja Nyamwamba Mulyambuli river confluence Mountain cleansing rituals are performed to the gods before the planting and harvest seasons or when t 1

Supporting Climate Resilient Heritage in Uganda - Melting Snow and Rivers in Flood

Explores a community-led response, where climate change risks the erasing of belief systems, cultural rites and scared sites alike.

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