Arts, culture and heritage
Documenting languages and crafts that are disappearing, and paying the people who still hold them.
11
Languages documented
240
Craft apprenticeships
18,000
Archive items
Open
Archive access
What the problem actually is.
India loses working knowledge every year - a weaving technique, a performance form, a language with a few hundred remaining speakers. Once the last practitioner stops, no amount of funding brings it back.
Our contribution is the one a technology organisation can actually make: recording, digitising and hosting the material properly, with the rights staying with the community rather than with us. Archives that sit on a failing hard drive in an office are not preservation.
We also pay practitioners to teach. A craft survives when someone under thirty can make a living from it, not when it is filmed.
Who this is for: Practitioners of endangered crafts, languages and performance traditions, and their communities.
The work, specifically.
Each of these is funded with its running costs included - stipends, repairs, follow-up - because that is what decides whether it survives past the first year.
Language documentation
Recording and archiving endangered languages with community linguists, rights retained locally.
Craft apprenticeships
Paid apprenticeships so a master practitioner can afford to train a successor.
Digital archives
Properly hosted, catalogued and backed-up archives, publicly accessible.
Performance support
Venues, travel and fees for traditional performers, particularly outside festival season.
School heritage projects
Students documenting their own village's crafts, songs and history.
11
Languages documented
240
Craft apprenticeships
18,000
Archive items
Open
Archive access
Named projects inside this programme.
Nagaland · since 2023
Open Archive
Recording endangered languages and crafts properly, with rights kept by the communities they came from.
How it works →
Three things that would make a difference here.
- Fund an apprenticeship for one year.
- Volunteer archival, cataloguing or translation skills.
- Commission craft work directly from a supported group.
Contributes to
- SDG 4 Quality education
- SDG 11 Sustainable cities and communities
Related programmes
Fund it, staff it, or send us your old laptops.
Tell us which programme interests you and roughly what you have in mind - money, equipment, time or expertise - and we will come back with something specific rather than a brochure.
