
<p>This article was last updated on: February 4th, 2024</p>
<p>Disclaimer: Please note that the resource presented in this article is neither evergreen nor perfect. Prices and group details may change over time. Some may become inactive while new ones may arise. There may be some mistakes. I will do my best to keep it updated and correct, but please do your own research before making decisions on what to join. Also note that I am obviously not a member or am even personally familiar with all of these groups. Just because a group is on this list does not mean I can openly recommend or endorse them. <strong>Again, please do your own research. I am an active member of some of these organisations, but I do not have board or decision-making positions in any of them. I cannot vet the information presented below and have not been paid by anyone to put any group on this list. If you are in the directory of any of the groups in this list and see a mistake, please feel free to send me a message and I will happily update it.</strong></p>
<h2 id="preservation-organisations-for-success">Preservation organisations for success</h2>
<p>One of my favourite things to do is compile resources for public use. There are tons of things out there. There is a lot of information. However, if you are new to the field, or simply new to the place you are in, you might just not know what's around. Where do you even look? Are you going to trawl the internet for weeks of your life to figure out what to do next? Will you post on Facebook groups and the distribution lists? Yeah, you could.</p>
<p>I've done that before. Or I could get us all started and do it for you to avoid the constant re-trawling every time you forget. Essentially, <strong>I like making stuff I wish I had</strong> and then sharing it because why not? It's already done. Maybe one day I will start charging, but until I decide to do that I recommend you take advantage of me haha. It is also my hope and intention that this list will help you find colleagues around the world with whom you would like to collaborate - knowing a group exists may be just what you need to get you started!</p>
<p>After the pretty amazing success of my previous giant table with <a href="/blog/where-to-study-art-conservation">Masters Conservation programs around the world</a> (with prices, details on internships, employability success rates, links, duration and specialties, etc.), I thought we needed a new table to help us all navigate the world of preservation. This last table was so successful that I had spontaneous volunteers from around the world messaging me asking me to add programs or fix certain details. It became a crowdsourced content table - which is really the best kind because it spreads the load of work. <strong>Thank you again to all you cool cats out there who sent stuff in.</strong></p>
<p>So I decided we should try this again one more time and <strong>have started us off with almost 70 preservation organisations of all sizes from around the world</strong> - just to whet your appetite and see if some of you love this resource enough to help us all make it huge! If we get a super nice list, I can eventually think about turning it into an Airtable or something more sophisticated with tags and filters. Excited? Please share on socials and tag me with your thoughts so I know I'm not the only nerd who likes making Excel tables of practical information.</p>
<h2 id="why-should-i-join-a-preservation-organisation">Why should I join a preservation organisation?</h2>
<p>This is a good question, because, you know what? Joining organisations is a budget issue sometimes - especially if you are joining a big, national one. You need to pick and choose who will get your allocated membership money for the year and why, especially if you intend to do this year after year. But the thing is, it's my personal opinion that you <em>should</em> join <em>something</em>. Even if it's only one, even if it's the cheaper, small, local option. Why? Here are some reasons why joining a preservation organisation is important for your career:</p>
<ul>
  <li><strong>You meet people.</strong> Networking is essential. There are jobs that are offered first to people you know are available. Just as with every other career in this world, many jobs are never posted or advertised. Why? Because not everyone works together well. If you had a chance to hire something for a very important but short project, would you rather pick from your pool of people you know and trust or find a rando you've never heard of? What if they're unreliable? What if they're unpleasant? What if they're just not what you need now? If you are yourself the rando helping yourself with sidegigs, sidegigs are rarely found in places where you apply for them formally. Sidegigs come through people who know you or have heard of you. <strong>Sidegigs come from people who want to work with you directly and for them to do that, you have to meet them first - and they have to know you're on the market.</strong></li>
  <li><strong>You get important resources.</strong> Of course, the number of resources you get may be tied to how expensive your membership is. Things cost time and money to make - and yes, that includes volunteer time. And yet, even small, free, organisations can have a host of resources if its membership is active and dedicated. What kinds of things will you get? Forums, job boards, newsletters, peer-reviewed journals, conference opportunities, webinars, free courses, discounts to related products and services, etc. Often times, people in organisations have things they are literally giving away and just want someone who is willing to pick the thing up - so they will send a group-specific message offering there first before they open the offer to the rest of the world. Sometimes, jobs show up in forums and newsletters that you would have <em><strong>never</strong></em> found out about on mass internet job boards - I won't name them, but you can guess the typical ones. <strong>Wouldn't you like to be in the know about that?</strong> So again, people are a resource. When you get connections, you are getting resources. The colleagues you can like, trust, and depend on will be one of the most valuable resources in your toolbox. But we shouldn't talk about people as if they were things, so let me rephrase: you may be making lifelong friends who will be worth so much more to you over time than the membership fee you paid to meet them.</li>
  <li><strong>You learn a lot.</strong> Especially if you become an active participant in your organisation, this can be as a committee or board member, or perhaps a volunteer for a particular thing or section, you will learn how organisations work. You will learn about whichever particular task you have volunteered for. <strong>You will learn about working with others when everybody else has other priorities. You will practice patience and improve your soft people skills - both big deals when applying for institutional jobs.</strong> If you are young and starting off, you will learn from your more experienced peers. If you are experienced, you will get updated information from your younger members. If you are the type of preservation organisation that is not specific to particular types of degrees (e.g. only conservators, or only registrars), you will learn a lot about the work of your colleagues. And here's another suggestion from me... if you are a conservator, go ahead and join, or at least keep tabs on, organisations for other people like registrars or archvists. This goes the other way around too. Find out what your peers are doing, what they care about, what worries them in their day-to-day job. This is valuable information.</li>
  <li><strong>You give back.</strong> Giving back is important. Preservation professionals work in a field where money is neither plentiful nor evenly spread. Getting clients is not easy. Buying raw materials is not cheap. If you are not in a big institution, it's hard to get stuff. It's hard to attend expensive events. You don't have staff, you don't have materials, you don't have access to resources that are not already freely available. When you join an organisation, you can pool your resources and work together to give something back to the community. If you were lucky enough to get into conservation school in spite of the cost and competition, or were skilled in business and set up a private pratice that works well enough to sustain you, or have an instutional job with benefits that pays for resources others can't afford, or have managed an excellent social media brand - you have something to help others. Just about anything you have learned to do can help someone else in some way or another. Although <strong>giving your time is, in a way, giving money - it's time you could have been using to make money doing something else</strong>, this doesn't mean your contributions have to be strictly monetary. Give what you can when you can, and you will be making a difference for the better. If your field gets better for everyone, that's better for you too. If we all help build what we wish we already had, we'll have a very different field very soon... or... you know, sooner than never.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="other-things-to-consider-before-choosing-the-right-preservation-organisation-for-you">Other things to consider before choosing the right preservation organisation for you</h2>
<p>Depending on where you are in your career or even where you are geographically, different organisations will have different sizes and types of resources for its members. Depending on what kind of stuff you want to get, one type may be better than another. For example...</p>
<ul>
  <li>Are you looking for a local group you can meet for in-person events or a support group where you can exchange material resources and share working spaces? Small and regional is better for this unless your large national group has well-organised regional subgroups that would work for this.</li>
  <li>Are you looking for a new job or do you intend to advance your career goals? Perhaps networking at a national or international level will be more appropriate.</li>
  <li>Do you prefer large groups with many arms and committees capable of organising large annual conferences? Go big.</li>
  <li>Are you interested in publishing your articles in an indexed journal? Probably better to go for the bigger ones but not a bad idea to start with your local organisation bulletins if you are still starting out and building your confidence.</li>
  <li>Are you an emerging student? Big or small will work, the wider you cast your net, the more likely you'll meet the perfect mentor - but going big means they probably won't be driving distance from you.</li>
  <li>Do you need sponsorship help to join? While smaller organisations may have these, you are more likely to find financial support with bigger groups.</li>
  <li>Are you already somehwat established and just need to find colleagues for collaborations? Either will work depending on your specific goals. If you are looking for things like grant information, for example, or access to analytical equipment, you're probably better off going big.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="brief-note-on-exchange-rates">Brief note on exchange rates</h2>
<p>For the sake of simplicity and so that you can actually compare on the same footing, I have converted all prices to USD based on the exchange rate around Dec 21st, 2023 - which is when I started working on this table in earnest:</p>
<p>1 GBP - US$ 1.27<br>1 EUR - US$ 1.10<br>1 CAD - US$ 0.75<br>1 AUD - US$ 0.68<br>1 NZD - US$ 0.63<br>1 MYR - US$ 0.22<br>1 BRL - US$ 0.20<br>1 INR - US$ 0.012</p>
<h2 id="the-table-of-preservation-organisations">The table of preservation organisations</h2>
<p>Without further ado, here is the very incomplete, but hopefully, ever-growing table of preservation organisations. Please don't be afraid to send me messages about mistakes and missing groups. I am sure there will be tons, of the latter, hopefully not the former. You can see I have a specific column at the very end of the table that will indicate whether the information for each group has only been retrieved from the public website or if someone in that group has actually confirmed the info. This will help everyone be sure which information is fully correct and which is an educated guess.</p>
<p><strong>Unless otherwise specified, all membership fees are annual.</strong></p>
<iframe src="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-nHhHA770f_V4DLwv9C5QWhO9ALsZnWxFW9SOXUf83Y/edit?usp=sharing&#x26;single=true&#x26;widget=true&#x26;headers=false" style="width: 100%; height: 600px;"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://bit.ly/preservation-organisations">Link to the full spreadsheet.</a></p>
<h2 id="what-did-i-miss">What did I miss?</h2>
<p>Naturally, I've probably only just scratched the surface. If there is anything wrong and you know you know the correct information, let me know! If your organisation is not there at all, let me know! Have things changed since I first released this post? Please reach out to me through any of my social media or through my contact form on this website and let me know. I will happily update when I get a free minute. As you must be aware, I run this website on my free time. Thanks for your support and patience!</p>
<h2 id="a-couple-updates-and-acknowledgements">A couple updates and acknowledgements</h2>
<p>For those of you wonderful, generous souls who would like to contribute to growing this table, I have created a <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MubzcWYnzKrt_7OFY1PMZD7ktTJyNdxIGEdIR4yD41s/edit?usp=sharing">new editable Excel sheet</a> where you are free to add, edit, and update information for everyone's benefit. Please be aware that <strong>this is not the original file</strong>. I have done this to prevent the original information from being corrupted or accidentally deleted. I will copy the information in this editable sheet to the master sheet presented above periodically</p>
<p>I want to explicitly thank all of you who have reached out to me in one way or another with encouraging comments about this article and its associated table. I am grateful for your patience where I may have got information wrong. I am happy to correct it where necessary. I am very pleased that this article will save a lot of you a lot of time and I feel proud of our profession - so many of you are selflessly offering me your time to add more groups to the table.</p>
<p><strong>So thank you again, and let's keep making resources for everyone!</strong> --></p><br><br><br><br>
<p>If you liked this post, sign up for <a href="http://bit.ly/3XYqzrt">my newsletter</a> so you can get the latest articles straight into your inbox.</p>


As a heritage professional, it's important to network and be involved with your local, regional, and international preservation organisations. But what's out there and what do they cost? And why should you bother joining anyway?

Preservation organisations - The Ultimate Table


<p>In March 2023, I had the opportunity to talk to <a href="https://climatemuseum.org/miranda-massie">Miranda Massie</a>, founder and Director of <a href="https://climatemuseum.org/">The Climate Museum</a>. I had never really looked at non-profit funding before, so this was a great chance to find out what’s going on behind-the-scenes.</p>
<p>How do climate and culture intersect on a day-to-day basis for an organisation focused on the climate crisis? The following is a summary of that interview.</p>
<h2 id="limited-funding-for-all">Limited funding for all</h2>
<p>When she began, Miranda expected that if you work for something in the middle of the Venn diagram of both climate and culture, this would mean that you’d be able to access funding streams from both sectors. She was wrong. She thought fundraising would be easier. It was the opposite.</p>
<p>It turns out that funding is very siloed. There are institutional funders for both climate funding streams and arts streams. You’d think they’d be perfect for an organisation doing both, but most of the time, you end up getting sent back and forth between the two programs.</p>
<p>Oh, you have a museum? You should go ask for the arts funding, we are doing climate change policy support.</p>
<p>Oh, but you’re doing climate change stuff. Yeah, no, we are focused on the arts. You should go check out the climate change funds.</p>
<p>Climate funding has been a challenge because, in global philanthropy, all forms of climate work are being funded at a <a href="https://www.climateworks.org/press-release/new-report-finds-still-less-than-2-of-global-philanthropic-giving-was-dedicated-to-climate-change-mitigation-in-2020/">level of 2%</a>, which does not reflect the urgency of the matter. This means that only 2% of funds are allocated to any and all work on climate.</p>
<p>The other 98% goes to other causes, many of them religious and educational (such as alumni solicitations). For cultural work on climate, you’d expect an important amount to be available, but this isn’t really the case. Miranda believes that’s starting to change, although we’re not there yet.</p>
<h2 id="where-does-the-2-go">Where does the 2% go?</h2>
<p>The lion’s share goes to climate policy research and advocacy. You see smaller sums going to frontline activist organisations and various climate justice leadership projects such as environmental justice groups, youth climate movements for intergenerational justice and other questions at the center of the climate crisis. Until recently, almost nothing had been identified as a philanthropic fund for the intersection of climate and culture/arts.</p>
<h2 id="the-politics-of-funding-for-climate-and-culture">The politics of funding for climate and culture</h2>
<p>There seems to be some resistance by traditional art funders to see art being mobilised for climate action because it can be interpreted as an instrumentalisation of the arts and a diminishing of artistic intrinsic values as humanistic expressions.</p>
<p>Although art has been <a href="https://artfilemagazine.com/political-art/">often used by many artists and movements to make political statements</a>, some art funders appear to feel that using art to drive policy and mobilise people for climate protagonism is vulgar or inappropriate.</p>
<p>This does not mean that things are not changing. The Climate Museum recently got a generous donation from a foundation that recognises the critical role that arts play to create the cultural shifts necessary for climate change policies to affect realities.</p>
<h2 id="forget-the-money-for-a-bit-what-about-the-public-do-people-really-care">Forget the money for a bit. What about the public? Do people really care?</h2>
<p>Yes, they do! Funding or not, Miranda experienced a positive reception to The Climate Museum from the general public from the very beginning. Attitudes today are so extraordinarily positive, that they have exceeded expectations. They have had young children insisting on having their birthday parties there and the Google visit reviews are amazing: 4.9 stars with 104 reviews.</p>
<p>
  <img src="/climate-museum-google-review-1.png" alt="5-star Google Review of The Climate Museum by user Mama Batata"><br><em>Recent excited Google reviews on how we need more spaces like The Climate Museum.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <img src="/climate-museum-google-review-2.png" alt="5-star Google Review of The Climate Museum by user Nicklaus Smith"><br><em>Another of The Climate Museum's many 5-start Google reviews applauding the work being the done and the staff.</em>
</p>
<p>This overwhelming support makes the gap between the public response and philanthropy action even more glaring, although this is not surprising as philanthropy is traditionally conservative to change. While Miranda senses a more stable and normative funding stream in the near future, she feels lucky to have had individual supporters at the beginning. Certainly, relying on your friends and personal network is not a workable business model, so it’s great when bigger institutions and complete strangers start showing up on your doorstep.</p>
<h2 id="the-journey-to-sustainability">The journey to sustainability</h2>
<p>Miranda left her job 9 years ago to found The Climate Museum and exhibits started 5 years ago. In spite of promising signs of change, the biggest surprise was how many problems there are in philanthropy. Although there are exceptions, it is normal for major foundations to spend their amounts by statute in a business-as-usual way which does not necessarily reflect global realities or needs.</p>
<p>This means that there may be little you can do, as an organisation, when asking for funds. It’s not up to you. It’s up to what the philanthropy wants to fund.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>It’s hard to communicate that making exhibitions and cultural programming is neither free nor cheap.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While there are some funding streams, like the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/arts/design/frankenthaler-foundation-energy-project-is-giving-museums-10-million.html">Helen Frankenthaler Foundation</a>, with a 10 million grant for the intersection of climate and culture - specifically carbon neutrality in museums - there is no established funding line for cultural programming.</p>
<p>In this context, Miranda has some advice if you work in nonprofits and heritage. <strong>Don’t give up.</strong></p>
<blockquote>
  <p>Whenever you have a chance to reach philanthropic streams, take it. Talk about the topic with everyone. You never know who might know about something or someone who might be able to help you. Many things never happen because no one talks about them. Many processes are hampered unnecessarily because no one knows enough about the issues.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So let’s talk about things. Leave me a comment and share the article if you enjoyed it.</p>
<h2 id="acknowledgements">Acknowledgements</h2>
<p>I would like to thank Miranda Massie for her time and her honest insights into the world of cultural and climate philanthropy for nonprofits. I write this article in the hopes that Miranda’s shared experience will help us in some way or another. Are you interested in collaborating with her? Let me know!</p>
<p>This article is part of the <strong>Founders in Heritage</strong> series. Read about the experiences of other founders and entrepreneurs in the heritage world through the links in the <a href="https://angelicaisa.com/blog">main blog</a>.</p><br><br><br><br>
<p>If you liked this post, you can follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConservaLlama">Twitter</a>, check out my newest <a href="https://www.instagram.com/a.isa140/">Instagram experiments</a> or connect with me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelicaisaadaniya/">Linkedin</a>. You can also sign up for the newsletter below to get my latest articles straight in your inbox.</p>


The Climate Museum - At the intersection of climate and culture


<p><a href="https://www.analitika.ba/people/aida-kalender">Aida Kalender</a> founded <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company/akcija-sarajevo">AKCIJA Sarajevo</a> with some friends in 1998. Akcija means “action” in Bosnian, and they began by organising large cultural music events for young people after the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This article is a result of an interview made in March 2023. I hope you enjoy reading Aida's fascinating tale as much as I enjoyed hearing it.</p>
<h2 id="on-financial-sustainability-of-non-profits-and-government-support-for-museums">On financial sustainability of non-profits and government support for museums</h2>
<p>The large cultural institutions in Bosnia had collapsed during the war, and smaller and more flexible independent initiatives seemed to work well in the late 90s. There were many non-profits in the cultural sector in Bosnia during those early years after the war and there was significant international aid and donations as culture was recognised as a strong vehicle for youth reconciliation, peace building, and democracy.</p>
<p>However, international funding never lasts forever and around the year 2000, there were other fresher conflict zones around the world and international foundations withdrew their financial aid.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>Once these international actors were gone, the funding dried up. The withdrawal of international foundations created a huge funding gap which many non-profit organisations could not survive.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="professionalisation-of-non-profits-and-leverage-of-civic-support">Professionalisation of non-profits and leverage of civic support</h2>
<p>In this context, AKCIJA Sarajevo began to look to find its new place in this new social context through the profesionalization of the sector by bringing in new skills in communications, management, cultural management, and policy.</p>
<p>The group identified laws in Bosnia and tried to engage with them through stakeholders from the cultural sector and mobilisation of citizens. They started organising a network of cultural staff and independent operators. This provided a platform for discussion about problems such as arts funding and gave them a collective voice.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>“We did some initial research in the form of interviews with the people from the cultural sector, both from the institutional sector and from non-profits, to see what the biggest problems were, the obstacles and needs of the sector at that moment. Based on these interviews, we created a list of crucial issues in the cultural sector.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the biggest issues was the lack of a Ministry of Culture at the state level. The lack of top-tier organisation created problems even for the largest national cultural institutions, among them <a href="https://www.zemaljskimuzej.ba/">The National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina</a>, which was closed from 2012-2015 due to lack of structural funding. You may see some of the international coverage of this event from October 3rd, 2012 in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/03/bosnia-national-museum-funding-crisis">The Guardian</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>The Museum had attempted to make a symbolic stand by locking the doors and placing bars on it thinking it would encourage a reaction from political bodies or society, but <strong>no one reacted</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="the-importance-of-cultural-policies-and-media-exposure-communication-is-everything">The importance of cultural policies and media exposure - communication is everything</h2>
<p>In 2015, AKCIJA visited the Museum by invitation of one of the employees. The general media had reported that the employees were unprofessional and lazy and did not know how to run the organisation. What Aida found in the Museum was shocking.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>There were about 45 employees coming to work every day and guarding the collections. The Museum didn’t have electricity or alarm systems anymore. The staff realised they were alone. They organised themselves into 8-hour shifts to guard the Museum. They had been doing this for 3 years with no salary, health insurance or any kind of benefit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>AKCIJA realised this story needed to be shared publicly. They called in a friend who was a professional photographer to create portraits of the museum’s employees and Aida ran a series of small interviews.</p>
<p>AKCIJA used this material as the basis for a public campaign/exhibition with video clips and photos of the staff called <a href="https://jasam.zemaljskimuzej.ba/">I am Museum</a>. They invited citizens and cultural organisations to the opening of their exhibition and to participate in the guarding shifts as an act of solidarity with the employees.</p>
<p><strong>The success was unprecedented.</strong> Citizens and personalities of the cultural sector showed up, hundreds of them every day to support the Museum. Some of them brought equipment to donate. Professors from the universities gave free lectures. Cultural organisations organised programs free of charge such as film nights, concerts and debates. Then the celebrities showed up, and with them, the media. The pressure on the political elites increased.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>After 45 days of strong media coverage and social media marketing with images of citizens coming to support the Museum, politicians agreed to find the money to backpay the employee wages and re-open the Museum in September 2015.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Several months later, AKCIJA won the <a href="https://www.europeanheritageawards.eu/winners/employees-activists-national-museum-bosnia-herzegovina-sarajevo/">Europa Nostra award</a>, and the Museum expanded its international connections with large European and American museums abroad.</p>
<h2 id="culture-as-a-medium-for-activation-and-integration">Culture as a medium for Activation and Integration</h2>
<p>You would think this is the happy ending to the story. <strong>The non-profit organised civil society and saved the big Museum.</strong> Unfortunately, this is not the end.</p>
<p>The small AKCIJA team worked for over a year to make this project happen, but once the battle had been won, a new gap appeared. The work and power dynamic in the official public sector for culture was not the same as the non-profit sector.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>The old balance of power relationships were re-established. You’re not part of the institution? Then you’re not part of the team. Thank you. We don’t really need you now. Goodbye. Business as usual now.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What had seemed the beginning of a seed for public and civic collaboration, a partnership between State and non-profit art organisations, a model for sustainability, was gone.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>“I saw this as a kind of public-civic collaboration, partnership, which could also be a model for sustainability for the non-profit sector because we basically share the same mission. We see culture as a public good. The state cultural institutions such as the Museum are also non-profit. They are a public organisation, and we are an independent organisation, but we are not commercial. I was thinking, okay, maybe we have the same mission. We can work together. We can share some resources. Maybe they have space we don’t have. We have other skills that can be of help. For example, the Museum didn’t have a website. We found the money to build them the website. Somehow, this collaboration didn’t work long after the Museum's opening, unfortunately…”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Aida feels there was a kind of prejudice on the side of the public cultural sector that people who work in non-profits are not professional and are nonconventional. It opened up a lot of new questions.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>How do you work in a country with no core funding for non-profit organisations in the arts? Basically, you live project to project. You find things that are interesting and worth pursuing, but it means you have to switch gears every two or five years.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>“Once you are in this sector, it really becomes a part of your life. In countries like the Netherlands, <a href="https://business.gov.nl/financing-your-business/subsidies/arts-and-culture/">you have four years of funding for non-profit art organisations</a>. This doesn’t exist in Bosnia, but it would be very important to start changing the cultural policies systematically. It means introducing new policy models of funding. To do that, we’d need a strong coalition again, a very good campaign, a lot of media support. I’m still trying to recharge and generate some energy to maybe return and start some projects again.”</p>
<h2 id="the-sysyphus-challenge">The Sysyphus challenge</h2>
<blockquote>
  <p>“It’s really like ups and downs. You have some ups, you get some funding, you create great results, great amazing things. You get some awards, but then everything goes down.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is no ending to this story. <strong>Yet</strong>. Aida is recharging and hopes to begin again in the future.</p>
<p>But how are you supposed to build upon previous results? Aida feels like the current model’s problem is that, in many ways, you are always at the beginning. As soon as one project finishes, you are at the beginning again. There is no recognition or evaluation of your work. It matters little if your non-profit was founded yesterday or if it’s been around for 25 years, like AKCIJA - everyone is in the same pool competing for the same funding.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>“Maybe we need a non-profit sector for culture with wider recognition by the cultural sector in general. We need to recognise that you can be independent, non-governmental and still be professional and talented. You don’t need to work within the framework of the public institutions - which can limit you in many ways.”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="final-thoughts-on-cultural-non-profits-outside-the-public-institution">Final thoughts on cultural non-profits outside the public institution</h2>
<p>Personally, I found some interesting differences with my experience in Latin America. Although both Peru and Bosnia had come out of more controlling political histories in the past years, the role of the State in both and the perceptions of the public are completely different.</p>
<p>While Bosnian society seems to expect strong services from its civil servants and is more likely to judge professionals in the private non-profit sector as less capable, the opposite has always struck me to be true in Peru. State institutions there are organisationally weak and the general impression of civil servants is that they are either lazy or mediocre or both - the kind of people who wouldn’t be able to get a job in the private sector because they’re not competent or hard-working enough.</p>
<p>Both of these views are generalisations, of course, but it was interesting to note that they were seemingly born from the local political structure. I would expect neither is quite the case for other countries, so I can’t speak for them - so please do share your thoughts and impressions on how cultural non-profits fit in the cultural sector of your area of the world.</p>
<p>Can we draw more parallels? Are we more similar than we thought at first glance? Or are we very different still? Are there any strategies we could share across borders to try to change cultural policies or are we all doomed to push the Sysyphus rock forever?</p>
<h2 id="acknowledgements">Acknowledgements</h2>
<p>I would like to thank Aida Kalender for her time and her honest insights into the world of cultural non-profits in Bosnia during the early turn of this new century. I write this article in the hopes that Aida’s shared experience will help us in some way or another. Are you interested in collaborating with her? Let me know!</p>
<p>This article is part of the <strong>Founders in Heritage</strong> series. Read about the experiences of other founders and entrepreneurs in the heritage world through the links in the <a href="https://angelicaisa.com/blog">main blog</a>.</p><br><br><br><br>
<p>If you liked this post, you can follow me on <a href="https://twitter.com/ConservaLlama">Twitter</a>, check out my newest <a href="https://www.instagram.com/a.isa140/">Instagram experiments</a> or connect with me on <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelicaisaadaniya/">Linkedin</a>. You can also sign up for the newsletter below to get my latest articles straight in your inbox.</p>


What happens when a non-profit civil organisation decides to save a floundering museum?

AKCIJA Sarajevo - A non-profit art organisation's story


<p>Fascinating journey through the world of alphabets, phonemes, graphemes, morphemes, writing systems, hieroglyphs and countless other insightful concepts that helped me progress in creating a 3D writing system. Thanks to Colin and my peer learners, I feel that I'm better connected to this beautiful universe of writing and symbols. Highly recommended to every polymath looking for new dots to connect with.</p>



<p><em>Wouldn't it be cool to invent your own alphabet? A unique form of calligraphy all your own? A script for one of the cultures in a world that you're building? Do you have a conlang that is crying out for a way to be written?</em></p>
<p>If you've ever asked yourself questions like these, <strong>Inventing Alphabets</strong> is for you. This course is a guided introduction to the practice of creating original writing systems as well as a grand tour of the anthropology, history, and linguistics of the world's writing systems.</p>
<h2 id="course-goals">Course Goals</h2>
<p>By the end of this course, you will:</p>
<ul>
  <li>Have invented an original writing system for a language of your choosing (could be a conlang!)</li>
  <li>Understand the organizational principles which govern writing systems.</li>
  <li>Have become aware of the diversity of the world's existing writing systems.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="course-structure">Course Structure</h2>
<ul>
  <li>Students: <strong>10</strong></li>
  <li>Length: <strong>2hr sessions x 6 weeks</strong> (taught live over Zoom)
    <ul>
      <li>4 lecture sessions</li>
      <li>2 workshop sessions (space for Q&#x26;A and working side-by-side on your own writing systems)</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Technical details: you can use whatever medium you like to create your system (either digital or using paper), as long as there's some way to show us what you've been working on! :smiley:</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="syllabus">Syllabus</h2>
<h3 id="week-1-the-origins-and-development-of-writing">Week 1: The Origins and Development of Writing</h3>
<p>The goal of this class is to get you acquainted with how writing works and where it came from. First, we'll disentangle the ideas of language and writing: these things are distinct but related, and related in interesting ways. Then we'll explore the origins of writing. We'll look at the material, social, and economic environments in which writing first arose, and how these things influenced the shape of early writing systems. We'll end with an interactive exercise to explore the effect of writing material and technology on the visual aspects of writing systems.</p>
<h3 id="week-2-the-structure-of-writing-systems">Week 2: The Structure of Writing Systems</h3>
<p>The goal of this class is to introduce you to the internal structure and logic of writing systems, using the Latin alphabet (the one you're reading right now) as an example. We'll look in more depth at the many ways in which writing relates to language. Then we'll introduce the different organizing principles that the writing systems of the world use which we'll be delving more deeply into in the second half of the course. We'll end with an exercise to develop an alternative alphabet for English or another language.</p>
<h3 id="week-3-workshop-session-1">Week 3: Workshop Session 1</h3>
<p><em>Workshop sessions are a combination of co-working, show and tell, troubleshooting, and office hours.</em></p>
<h3 id="week-4-writing-sound">Week 4: Writing Sound</h3>
<p>The goal of this class is to introduce you to the families of non-alphabetic writing systems that nevertheless represent sound: these are the <strong>abjad</strong>, <strong>abugida</strong>, and <strong>syllabary</strong>. We'll be looking in depth at three systems: the Hebrew abjad, the Devanagari abugida, and the Cherokee syllabary. The class will finish with an exercise where we try to adapt the alphabet we made last time into an abjad, abugida, or syllabary.</p>
<h3 id="week-5-writing-meaning">Week 5: Writing Meaning</h3>
<p>The goal of this class is to introduce you to the family of <strong>morphographic</strong> writing systems, systems which primarily encode minimal units of meaning (i.e. <strong>morphemes</strong>) rather than sound. We'll look at the ways these systems manage the complexity of representing all the morphemes in a language, when the number of morphemes in a language has no upper limit. We will use as our examples Chinese characters, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and cuneiform. Finally, we'll end with an exercise to add some morphographic elements to one of the writing systems we've worked on in previous weeks.</p>
<h3 id="week-6-workshop-session-2">Week 6: Workshop Session 2</h3>
<p><em>Workshop sessions are a combination of co-working, show and tell, troubleshooting, and office hours.</em></p>
<h2 id="who-should-sign-up">Who Should Sign Up?</h2>
<p>This course requires no linguistic training, knowledge of any languages but English, or artistic prowess. What it does require is a spirit of curiosity and play: <strong>curiosity</strong> because you'll be learning a lot about how people have written things across time and space, and <strong>play</strong> because you'll be experimenting, brainstorming, sketching and revising until you've made the writing system of your heart's desire.</p>


Inventing Alphabets

Bülent Duagi


<p>I've been taking <a href="https://twitter.com/colingorrie">@colingorrie</a>'s Meta-Skills for Language Learning course via @hyperlink_a and it's been incredibly insightful!</p>


<p>Learning a second language: Many people attempt it but few accomplish it. Despite the wide variety of books, apps, and courses promising fluency with little effort ("in only 15 minutes a day"), most language learners do not achieve their goals. But there is lots of research studying how language learning works and how to do it effectively. Unfortunately, few language learners are aware of it.</p>
<p>Let's fix that. This course is an accessible introduction to the science and practice of language learning. You'll learn:</p>
<ul>
  <li>How to select materials for language learning (and which kinds to avoid!)</li>
  <li>How to use language learning materials effectively</li>
  <li>How to manage motivation throughout the language learning process</li>
  <li>How your needs change as you progress from beginner to intermediate to advanced</li>
  <li>How to learn multiple languages at once (and whether you should!)</li>
  <li>How a little knowledge of how language works can save you a lot of time</li>
</ul>
<p>In short, this course provides you with a toolkit of knowledge, techniques, and mindsets you can use over your lifetime as a language learner.</p>
<h2 id="what-youll-get">What You'll Get</h2>
<p><em>Meta-Skills for Language Learning</em> is a self-paced online course divided into 5 modules</p>
<ul>
  <li>Audio lessons with transcripts.</li>
  <li>PDF worksheets.</li>
  <li>Access to live monthly Q&#x26;A session</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="structure-of-the-course">Structure of the Course</h2>
<h3 id="module-1-why-most-language-learning-resolutions-fail">Module 1: Why most language learning resolutions fail</h3>
<p>In this module, you'll learn the answer to the question: <strong>Why do so many language learning resolutions fail?</strong> We'll talk about why we learn languages, and how your reason for learning a language affects how you go about learning it. We'll also highlight some unsuccessful strategies for learning languages and why they don't work. We'll discuss some assumptions people often bring to language learning and show you which are legitimate and which are false and unhelpful. Finally, I'll show you how to take an inventory of your language learning practice as it is today and use it as a starting point to build a new one.</p>
<h3 id="module-2-the-science-of-how-we-learn-languages">Module 2: The science of how we learn languages</h3>
<p>This module introduces the results of the last few decades of research in second language acquisition. We now know a lot about how language learning works. And it turns out that it's not much like the way most people go about learning languages. I'm going to bust language learning myths, and replace these myths with science-backed knowledge.</p>
<h3 id="module-3-spending-your-time-and-money-wisely">Module 3: Spending your time and money wisely</h3>
<p>In this module we will use what we learned in the last module to review different types of language learning materials and methods: from formal classes and private tutors to conversation partners, textbooks, and apps. Along the way, you'll learn why <strong>the best apps for language learning aren't language-learning apps at all</strong>.</p>
<h3 id="module-4-the-language-learning-mindset">Module 4: The language learning mindset</h3>
<p>This module introduces a factor that will make or break your language learning success: your mindset. I'll teach you practical techniques for working within the constraints of human psychology: techniques for maintaining motivation, fighting burnout, and keeping your love for language learning alive. I'll teach you <strong>the counterintuitive way you can keep your progress steady by doing less</strong>.</p>
<h3 id="module-5-creating-your-language-learning-roadmap">Module 5: Creating your language learning roadmap</h3>
<p>In this final module, we'll taking what you've learned in the previous modules and apply it to your own language learning practice. We'll also discuss some special situations you may find yourself in, such as:</p>
<ul>
  <li>learning dead languages</li>
  <li>learning less-commonly taught languages, and</li>
  <li>learning multiple languages at the same time (including the age-old question <strong>how to learn Spanish and French at the same time without mixing them up?</strong>)</li>
</ul>
<p>Finally, you'll create a new language learning roadmap you can use to guide you over the coming months and years of your language learning.</p>
<h2 id="about-colin">About Colin</h2>
<p>Colin Gorrie is a linguist and experienced language learner. He has been learning languages for 25 years and has spent a decade studying how language works. In this course, he joins his theoretical background in linguistics with his practical experience as a learner of many languages to give you the tools to get you making progress in your target language – and start having fun – once again!</p>
<h2 id="faq">FAQ</h2>
<blockquote>
  <p>Is this course suitable for someone who has never learned a language before?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yes, this course is perfect for someone who wants to get start their language learning journey on the right foot.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>Is this course suitable for an experienced language learner?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If you are an experienced polyglot with a string of language learning successes under your belt, this course will likely be too basic for you.</p>
<p>However, if you've been learning a language for a while, and you feel frustrated with your lack of progress, this course will be able to help you.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>Do I have to be learning a commonly studied language like French or Spanish?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No, these techniques will work for any language – even dead ones! I'll show you how to adapt these techniques and apply these strategies to less-commonly taught languages as well.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>Do I have to be available at a particular to take part?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No, this class is completely asynchronous and self-paced.</p>

Meta-Skills for Language Learning

Fanny Luor


<p>Learning about the effectiveness of comprehensible input significantly improved my approach to learning German. Fewer boring flash cards, more interesting texts, podcasts, and videos. That insight alone was worth the price of the course.</p>


Glenn


<p>Colin is an absolute genius, a patient teacher, and a thrilling linguist.</p>
<p>He encouraged our cohort to explore unique directions and was able to facilitate everyone’s different ideas. Throughout the course, Colin brought each of our projects from a handful of lip-and-tongue noises to a complex, beautiful, and unique language. I hope to take another course with him soon!</p>



<h2 id="course-goals">Course Goals</h2>
<p>This course is a hands-on introduction to making constructed languages (or <strong>conlangs</strong>) as a creative pursuit, taught by a linguist and experienced conlanger. The course also serves as an introduction to linguistics, but instead of learning the material in a dry, lecture style, you'll learn it all by doing. By the end of the course, you'll not only have created a language of your own, but you'll also have the ability to repeat the process and create whole worlds full of languages.</p>
<blockquote>
  <p>Colin is an absolute genius, a patient teacher, and a thrilling linguist.</p>
  <p>
    He encouraged our cohort to explore unique directions and was able to facilitate everyone’s different ideas. Throughout the course, Colin brought each of our projects from a handful of lip-and-tongue noises to a complex, beautiful, and unique language. I hope to take another course with him soon!
    —Jake
  </p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="length-commitment">Length / Commitment</h2>
<ul>
  <li>Length: 6 weeks</li>
  <li>Classes: 2-hour live workshop sessions
    <ul>
      <li>These are live sessions but are recorded for you to review if you need to miss a session.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>Homework: Approx. 1 hour per week</li>
  <li>Also includes:
    <ul>
      <li>Course textbook written by me, Colin (~90pp)</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>
<h2 id="syllabus-schedule">Syllabus / Schedule</h2>
<h3 id="week-1-introduction">Week 1: Introduction</h3>
<p>What is a language and what does it mean to construct a language? In this session you’ll learn enough of the basics of linguistics to figure out what we need to do to make our first conlang. We’ll use this knowledge to break the task into chunks and set up a logical progression which will guide the rest of the course. Finally I’ll send you away with a mission to find a spark of inspiration for your first language that will guide you throughout the process.</p>
<h3 id="week-2-sounds">Week 2: Sounds</h3>
<p>What gives a language its unique sound? In this session, you'll learn about the range of sounds made by the languages of the world. You'll also learn a system of classifying sounds and use that information to create a palette of sounds for your language to draw on.</p>
<h3 id="week-3-from-sounds-to-words">Week 3: From Sounds to Words</h3>
<p>In this chapter, you'll learn how to combine sounds to make words according to a blueprint that you'll develop for your language. This is where your language starts develop its unique flavour.</p>
<h3 id="week-4-from-words-to-sentences">Week 4: From Words to Sentences</h3>
<p>This session is about going from your language’s first words to your language’s first sentences. To do this, we’ll learn the different strategies languages use to package meaning into words. Then we’ll learn about the different ways languages express relationships between words. This will give us the tools to start making sentences.</p>
<h3 id="weeks-5-6-a-more-powerful-grammar-parts-1-and-2">Weeks 5–6: A More Powerful Grammar, Parts 1 and 2</h3>
<p>In these sessions we will start to increase the expressive power of your language by introducing the many things you can do with sentences that are not so simple. You'll learn thrilling grammatical strategies for adding additional details about when, where, and why something happened. You'll marvel at the ease with which you'll be combining sentences – ok, look: it's hard to write a captivating description of grammatical topics. But trust me, we'll have fun making your language capable of doing more.</p>
<h2 id="artifacts">Artifacts</h2>
<p>By the end of the course, you will have created a set of core reference material for a new language:</p>
<ul>
  <li>A short guide to your language, including information on spelling, pronunciation, as well as how to form words and sentences.</li>
  <li>A small dictionary for your language</li>
  <li>A translation of a short fable (&#x3C; 100 words in English)</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
  <p>
    I must say I was really curious before we started the course - and all of my expectations went completely fulfilled. I think the course is really well structured as a sort of path that guides the student through the basic steps of building a conlang. At week 0, I knew nothing about conlangs and in just two months I got to write a sample story, how exciting!
    —Sandro
  </p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="who-should-sign-up">Who Should Sign Up</h2>
<p>This course is for you if you:</p>
<ul>
  <li>Have a creative project you'd like to make a realistic language for (e.g. authors, game designers, worldbuilders).</li>
  <li>Want to learn to conlang as a creative pursuit.</li>
  <li>Are curious about linguistics and want to learn it in a fun and creative way.</li>
</ul>
<p>But it's probably not for you if you...</p>
<ul>
  <li>Are an experienced conlanger (this will be too basic for you).</li>
  <li>Are most interested in making a planned language for international communication (i.e. an auxlang).</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="requirements">Requirements</h2>
<ul>
  <li>No linguistics background is assumed.</li>
  <li>You'll need a Google account to participate in shared Google Docs/Sheets.</li>
</ul>


Language Construction Workshop

Jake Fee


<p>I've wanted to learn how to create a language but almost gave up hope until I found Colin's Language Construction Workshop. I started with nearly zero linguistics background, and in the end, I learned all the necessary foundations to create my first language. Colin is a fantastic teacher, and I want to recommend his course to anyone interested in making their first language!</p>


Ji Woo Kim

Natasha Lipman


<p>I must say I was really curious before we started the course - and all of my expectations went completely fulfilled. I think the course is really well structured as a sort of path that guides the student through the basic steps of building a conlang. At week 0, I knew nothing about conlangs and in just two months I got to write a sample story, how exciting!</p>


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