Clara Arokiasamy OBE, MSc

Clara is the Founder of KALAI, which focuses on advocacy, change-making, and organisational development across the public sector engaged in the planning and delivery of cultural heritage services; and developing international skills and knowledge sharing and exchange partnerships in the management of cultural heritage.

Clara is the Chair of the ICOMOS-UK’S Intangible Cultural Heritage Committee which she founded in 2012.

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 25 years. She was Deputy Director Operations at the Heritage Lottery Fund, a member of the Culture Committee at the UK National Commission for UNESCO, Vice President of the International Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage at ICOMOS International and a member of the Strategic Review Committee at ICOM International. 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. She worked with EU Commission on EU-funded interventions on cultural heritage in 2018.

Clara has consulted on cultural heritage in Europe, Canada and America for academic, community and arts and heritage sectors. These have included design and delivery of workshops for the Masters course at the centre for Museums Studies, University of Oslo; a seminar for arts and heritage professionals at the University of Toronto; and a workshop on Intangible Cultural Heritage and Landscapes for the Summer School at the Nida Arts Colony, in Lithuania. She was invited to be a key speaker at the Roundtable Meeting on Intangible Cultural Heritage at the Russian International Cultural Forum in 2018. Clara continues to deliver papers on Cultural Heritage in the UK and abroad regularly and comments on equality and social issues.

KALAI
Email: clara.arokiasamy@btinternet.com