About us

We are run by a Board of Trustees, under the leadership of our President, Clara Arokiasamy.

Clara Arokiasamy, OBE

Clara is the President of ICOMOS UK and chairs its Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee (ICHC), which she founded in 2012. Under her leadership, ICOMOS UK undertaken a process of significant modernisation, including the critical role played by the ICHC in the UK’s ratification of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage. This is a strand which now runs through all our work. 

Clara is a strategic planner by background. Her involvement, as a senior manager and non-executive member, in the planning and delivery of arts and heritage services in the UK spans local government, community sector, and Non-Government Departments over a period of 30 years. She was Deputy Director Operations at UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund, senior manager responsible for research and strategic policy and planning in several local authorities and a member of the Culture Committee at the UK National Commission for UNESCO.  She also chaired the London Mayor’s Heritage and Diversity Task Force and the Open University’s research board on Cultural Rights and Kenya’s New Constitution, and was the Judge of the 2022 Annual IHBC Gus Astley Student Award.

Her international roles have included:  Vice President of the International Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage, a member of the Rights-Based Approaches, World Heritage and Doctrinal Review Working Groups at ICOMOS International, and a member of the Strategic Review Committee at ICOM International. Clara contributed to the EU Commission on EU-funded interventions on cultural heritage.

Clara has advised on cultural heritage in Europe, Canada and America and the Arab region for academic, community and arts and heritage sectors. She is the Founder and Coordinator of the Global South Exchange Network which promotes South-South Cooperation in the management of cultural heritage.

Clara regularly chairs and contributes as a panellist regularly at national and international roundtables and conferences on the protection and safeguarding of tangible and intangible cultural heritage. She has delivered seminal events focusing including on the need for ratification of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention, the integration of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, the embedding of the management of the impacts of climate change and rights-based approaches (RBA) into conservation generally and in relation to indigenous, migrant and Diaspora communities.

The Board provides strategic and financial oversight. Our Trustees offer expertise and experience from a wide range of disciplines, and lead specific aspects of our work. Much of this takes place through our members and specialist committees, including through the representation of the UK on ICOMOS International Scientific Committees.

The work of ICOMOS UK is supported by a small Secretariat.