Biography

Clara is the President of ICOMOS-UK and the Chair of ICOMOS-UK’s Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Committee which she founded in 2012.  Her leadership role in promoting ICH in the UK played a pivotal role in the UK Government’s ratification of UNESCO’s  2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, in 2024.  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 the Deputy Director of Operations at the Heritage Lottery Fund which was a national remit. Clara chaired the UK London Mayor’s pan-London Heritage and Diversity Task Force, responsible for implementing the recommendations arising out of the Mayor’s inquiry into African and Asian Heritage in London, and the Open University’s research board on Cultural Rights and Kenya’s New Constitution. Her other board appointments include: 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 and the UK’s Bar Standards Board. In addition to being an expert member of ICOMOS’s ICH Scientific Committee and Climate Action Working Group, Clara has contributed to the Right-Based Approaches, World Heritage and Doctrinal Text Review working groups. She is a member of the European Group for national Presidents. Clara has consulted on cultural heritage in the UK, Europe, Canada and America for academic, community and arts and heritage sectors. She writes and speaks regularly on:  race equality and the future of cultural heritage, the Global South in the Global North- Diaspora heritage, and the integration of intangible and tangible heritage values in conservation. She is a keen supporter of South-South cultural co-operation for the Global South.