INTO Online 2021

INTO Online 2021 invited members to re-engage, rethink and explore our theme of ‘Building Resilience’ alongside the best in global heritage, with three days of international learning and exchange.

Responding to a changing landscape for heritage trusts worldwide, navigating their way through a global pandemic with new obstacles to face, in 2021 we ran our first virtual conference.

From 20 – 22 April 2021, INTO Online provided a digital space to gather as a global family. To share ideas and approaches, concerns and challenges. And to build resilience within the National Trust movement.

We are deeply grateful to our sponsors, American Express for supporting us in the delivery of INTO Online 2021.

From broadening organisational sustainability to new approaches to promoting climate preparedness to sharing methodologies for telling inclusive histories, ‘Building Resilience’ celebrated the global strength of the INTO network.

As our movement works to amplify the voice of diverse histories, INTO Online was a space to share our global experiences.

Many of our sites carry the weight of brutal stories of colonialism and slavery that shape what these places represent today.

Our keynote from British-Nigerian historian, Professor David Olusoga, was a moment to uncover the gaps in our historic storytelling, and shine a light on ‘Forgotten Histories’.  For our ‘Sites of Memory’ panel, INTO members positioned along Trans-Atlantic slave trading routes, shared approaches to reinterpreting sites for a world asking to move beyond heritage as a ‘soft play’ area.

As well as sharing similar missions, the INTO family thrives on the practical exchange of knowledge.

Shaped by INTO programmes and projects, INTO Online offered opportunities to share tangible ways of enhancing resilience across a number of areas. Masterclasses covering everything from volunteering, grant fundraising, to future planning and on-the-ground interpretation at heritage sites drew on the vast expertise of our network.

INTO webinars throughout the year often focus on practical expertise sharing.

See upcoming opportunities in the lead up to INTO Antwerp 

With the generous support of American Express, INTO undertook research into a more equitable understanding of our heritage, delivered with and by local communities, as we emerge from the crises of 2020.

Our study ‘Putting the local into global heritage’ was launched at INTO Online, uncovering how some of the world’s most famous heritage sites are reapproaching relationships with surrounding communities to enhance their conservation work.

Read the full report