INTO publishes 2020 Annual Report

After a year like no other, we are pleased to present our 2020 Annual Report.

2020 was a time of personal tragedies, social and economic disruption, and massive upheaval. National Trusts throughout the world faced huge challenges, as did the people we depend so much on – our staff, volunteers, supporters, and visitors.

INTO had a very simple choice: let it dominate us, or to seize what opportunities we could, to help shape our world for the better.

As a result, 2020 has been a year like no other for positive reasons, too. Instead of travelling and face to face meetings, we expanded our grant programmes to help our members through the crisis, to share knowledge and the experience of coping with Covid-19 as it unfolded, and to build our family into an ever-stronger network.

This enabled us to support our smaller trusts, facing what was for many an existential crisis, to stay afloat. At the same time, we have worked with some of our larger organisations to undertake new work on subjects from climate change to telling the whole story of our sites.

One of the things that definitely stood out in 2020 was the strong desire to work together, learn from and help each other.

As 2021 unfolds, it’s clearer than ever that the future will not be like the past. We hope one of the lessons learned will be that we need a more sustainable future, where the values of heritage, nature and conservation are centre stage in official plans. But we also know that many governments will be racing for growth and recovery of a narrower kind, and so our voice will be needed more than ever.

Our priorities remain as important as ever: nurturing the family of organisations that form our INTO network; facilitating a growing movement for heritage, beauty and nature; articulating through our collective voice the importance of the work we do for the citizens of the world, and building a strong, vibrant and sustainable organisation.

Though we could never have envisaged or wanted a year like 2020, we have learnt new things about ourselves and emerge stronger and more committed than ever.