Catherine’s Page

Catherine Leonard is the Secretary General of INTO

• Conference learning (Weekly blog, 17 September 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Our biennial Conference ended yesterday. As I’m en route home, I’m posting my final day’s speech by way of a blog for today.  (More to follow!) It’s good to share As we close the 17th International Conference of National Trusts, I want to take you back to the first. Held in 1978 it ...
• Down on the farm (Weekly blog, 3 September 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Farmer’s granddaughter ‘I’m a farmer’s daughter’ is one of the first things my mother will say to anyone new she meets.   It’s an essential part of her DNA.  I don’t think about my farming heritage in quite the same way, although yesterday’s visit to the local farm show did get ...
• Small Grants and Big News (Weekly blog, 6 August 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Small Grants Programme Two things this week. Firstly, Monday was the deadline for applications to the Small Grants Programme.   These are now being reviewed by the panel.  I only took a quick glance but it looks like a tough competition this time with some really strong proposals.   Good luck to one ...
• Busman’s Summer Holiday (Weekly blog, 30 July 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Summer holidays are in the air!   This week, the children finally broke up and the long break is under way.  Not quite as long as I remember it being however.   25 July seems a very late finish, although they do go back on 5 September.  Six weeks on the dot. I ...
• A matter of time (Weekly blog, 23 July 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Time for a change It’s been six weeks since my last confession, sorry blog, as I have been rather snowed under caring for my aging mother.  Time has become a very precious commodity.  And blogging had gone the way of exercise and housework: relegated to extraneous activity.   Things are beginning to ...
• Volunteering: ‘Not just hands but heads’ (Weekly blog, 11 June 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Volunteering was the theme of this week and I participated in an excellent webinar on Friday.  We’re hoping these will become regular Friday events in the future so do watch out for the next ones. INTO Volunteering webinar The webinar was led by Shila Brown, formerly National Volunteering and Community Manager with ...
• A possible new project for INTO (Weekly blog, 4 June 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General On Monday, I spent a hot Bank Holiday in Brussels meeting partners in a new project within the Interreg Europe programme. Project preparation Last year, through our colleagues at the Gelderland Trust, we were introduced to the people developing INNOCASTLE.   This is a project seeking to revitalise castles, manors and estates by developing ...
• Keep it in the family (Weekly blog, 28 May 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General This week, we welcomed a new member of the INTO family, Bodenfreiheit – Verein zur Erhaltung von Freiraeumen.  Bodenfreiheit is our first Austrian member organisation.  Their goal is to engage people in securing land (Boden) for public enjoyment.  Members contribute €120 pa and the society uses these donations to buy ...
• Heritage in Trust (Weekly blog, 21 May 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General A Trust model for Russia? So this week began with a meeting with Oleg Ryzkkov, Deputy Minister of Culture for the Russian Federation. Recently promoted from Head of the Russian Heritage Agency, Mr Ryzkhov was on a fact-finding visit with the National Trust here. He is responsible for all cultural heritage ...
• Secretariat news (Weekly blog, 14 May 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Last Thursday we held one of our quarterly Board and Secretariat teleconferences.  It’s a bit lazy but I’m going to use my Secretariat Report as the basis for this blog because I’m fresh out of ideas!  (However, it is good to recycle … !) My report is an opportunity to update ...
• An INTO Handbook for Heritage Trusts (Weekly blog, 7 May 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Handbook for Heritage Trusts This week, I have been thinking a lot about our new manual, ‘From Start Up to Sustainability: An INTO Handbook for Heritage Trusts’. The idea of the Handbook is to showcase the work, philosophy and organisational structures of National Trusts around the world. It is intended as a ...
• Raising the roof (Weekly blog, 30 April 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Roof-tops This week, we dropped in on one of our local NT places, the Vyne.  Oh my, what a treat!  We used to be fairly regular visitors when a friend of ours was Head Gardener, but haven’t been for a while.   Wow.  We had a wonderful time exploring the new exhibitions ...
• Trust Kids! (Weekly blog, 23 April 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General This week we celebrated World Heritage Day with a speech by INTO Chairman, Fiona Reynolds, in Cambridge, and the launch of our new resource, Trust Kids! World Heritage Day UNESCO designated 18 April as International Day for Monuments and Sites in 1983. While UNESCO is responsible for the listing of World Heritage Sites, ...
• Feeling nostalgic (Weekly blog, 9 April 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Feeling nostalgic I’ve been feeling rather nostalgic this week, for a number of reasons. On Tuesday, I met INTO Chairman, Fiona Reynolds, at the National Trust HQ in Swindon for an INTO brainstorming session.    It felt like a (lovely) step back in time! I count myself lucky to have worked with ...
• Saint Lucia: A causeway for concern (Weekly blog, 2 April 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General News from Saint Lucia The Saint Lucia National Trust is fighting two planning battles at either end of their beautiful island. At the INTO members Global Meet-up on Tuesday, Director Bishnu Tulsie briefed us on these alarming development proposals. Firstly, to build a dolphin park at Pigeon Island, one of the Trust’s ...
• A look back at 2016 (Weekly blog, 26 March 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General I’ve been finalising the 2016 INTO Annual Review this week.   Just waiting for the figures from our Accountant now and then we’re good to go.   Having this week also drafted a long speech for World Heritage Day however, my creative juices are running dry.  It’s cheating but I’m ...
• New ideas (Weekly blog, 19 March 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General “The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones,” said John Maynard Keynes.  Well, I’m rather regretting blogging about time management and spring cleaning last week! Think big This week has been full of the kind of big thinking I was extolling.  Finalising the new ...
• Spring cleaning (Weekly blog, 13 March 2017) A short blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Spring cleaning was my goal this weekend.  Inspired by National Spring Cleaning Week (6-12 March), I had a long list of jobs from rotating matresses to reorganising the larder. Sad to say, I didn’t complete the challenge.  These things always take longer than you think … (more about that later). Still, ...
• Russian reminiscences (Weekly blog, 5 March 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General On Friday, I caught a brief report by the BBC’s Russian Correspondent, Sarah Rainsford, in which she took a nostalgic look back at visits to Moscow.  I was momentarily transported from a wet drive home to my own five months undergraduate placement to Voronezh in 1992. Voronezh 300 miles south of Moscow, Voronezh ...
• INTO EC/Board Meeting (Weekly blog, 26 February 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General We held our most recent EC/Board meeting on 16 February, as I mentioned in my last blog.   (This one actually covers a fortnight ago, as I was in France last week enjoying the winter sunshine.  Sigh.) Conference calling We hold our EC/Board calls by webinar.   There is something really magical about ...
• Collaboration: Internal and external (Weekly blog, 12 February 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Internal collaboration I’ve just finalised the Secretariat Report for our INTO Board meeting next week. We hold about five of these every year by teleconference and one in person.   In addition to the reporting back, it’s a chance to discuss strategic issues and to take the pulse of the broader INTO membership, ...
• GlobalGiving crowdfunding experience (Weekly blog, 5 February 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General You will have not been able to miss our GlobalGiving campaign at the end of last year – many thanks for following the story, sharing and donating!  Here is some feedback on the experience from my perspective, which I hope you will find useful. What is GlobalGiving? We applied to join the ...
• Archives, monuments and gardens (Weekly blog, 30 January 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General Endangered Archives Programme Last week, I had a great conversation with Ruth Hansford, Grants Portfolio Manager at the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme.  (She’s new to the role and you can read her first impressions of the job here.) We talked about the challenges of physical digitisation as well as access and rights.  ...
• Historic House Futures (Weekly blog, 22 January 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, INTO Secretary-General 70 historic house businesses may fail in the next five years, according to UK Historic Houses Association (HHA).   Rather a startling statistic from a great talk by Ben Cowell, HHA Director General (and former National Trust Director of the East of England) here in London on Thursday. Historic Houses Association The HHA represents a group of over ...
• New Year catch-up (Weekly blog, 16 January 2017) A blog by Catherine Leonard, INTO Secretary-General I’ve got out of the habit of writing my blog over the Christmas/New Year break so this is just a quick summary of what’s been going on.   In the run up to Christmas we were all very involved in the final stages of the INTO Africa GlobalGiving campaign to raise funds ...
• Places I remember, all my life (3 December 2016) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General On this day in 1965, the Beatles released their sixth studio album, Rubber Soul.  The track list boasts many memorable hits, among them: Drive My Car, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Michelle … In my life But it’s track 11 that particuarly interests me. John Lennon was only 24 when he wrote ‘In My Life’ ...
• Heritage education on Universal Children’s Day A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General 20th November is the UN’s Universal Children’s Day.   It was established in 1954 to promote international togetherness, awareness among children worldwide, and improving children’s welfare.   So today we celebrate how INTO is helping deliver this mission through its heritage education work. Heritage education When I first graduated, I worked in education for several years and ...
• The end of cultural pessimism: People power in Slovakia (Weekly blog, 13 November 2016) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General This week, I was in Bratislava at the excellent ‘Who owns the Monuments’ Conference.  Organised as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations of the National Trust of Slovakia, I was thrilled to be invited having first got to know the organization through Martin Kovac and Peter Táborský back in 1999. A ...
• Comings and goings (Weekly blog, 6 November 2016) A blog by Catherine Leonard, INTO Secretary-General I’ve just been listening to Oliver’s pod-cast from COP 22 and thinking to myself how lucky we are to have him and the team representing the National Trusts of the world in Marrakech for the fortnight of UN Climate Change talks.  Do check out his updates when you can ...
• Reflections (Weekly blog, 30 October 2016) A blog by Catherine Leonard, Secretary-General It was half-term this week so I’ve been on leave.  Well on and off leave, as are most of us these days.   Last Sunday we took the children to Oxford for the day.   Much of our time was spent in the Ashmolean.  Wow and double wow.  What an utterly amazing place!   ...

Email Catherine: cleonard@intoorg.org