Happy New Year from the ITP team!
Written by George Peckham, ITP Coordinator
We wanted to wish you all a very Happy New Year and give you a brief up-date on our plans for 2026.
2025 has been another fun and successful year; it has been great to meet with so many ITP fellows throughout the year for the Annual Programme, legacy projects, and informal catchups. To hear our reflections on the last 12 months, read our Season’s Greetings blog.
As always, we will be looking forward to welcoming a new cohort of ITP fellows to the global network for the next Annual Programme. The process for selecting participants for ITP 2026 is still ongoing, and we are working with our BM department representatives to finalise the 2026 cohort. The 2026 participants will officially take to the ITP global network to over 400 fellows!!
Before that, we are very excited to be running our first ITP+ legacy project since 2019! In April we will be running a week-long course focusing on global engagement and cultural diplomacy. Part of this programme will include attending the 2026 ICOM UK Annual Conference, which this year has the theme of Museum Diplomacy in Action. It was great to see so many of the network were interested in this legacy project and gives us a lot to think about for future ITP+ courses. We will be sharing who is joining us for this project in April very soon.
But of course, the big news of 2026 will be that it is the International Training Programme’s 20th anniversary!!
We will be celebrating our 20th anniversary, and our 20th annual programme, in 2026. For our anniversary year our projects and programmes will be focusing on partnership, collaboration and global connections. We have lots of ideas of how we are going to celebrate this milestone throughout the year, including with some projects that are being planned in collaboration with the ITP Advisory Board. The Advisory Board page on our website has been given an update, which gives a small preview of some of the work the Board are doing in 2026.
We will be sharing a new call for applications for our ITP Conference and Research Grants. If you have a place at a conference or a research proposal that needs additional financial support, we might be able to support you. To celebrate the 20th anniversary, instead of our usual conference and research grants, this year the ITP will be awarding collaboration grants to support members of the network to undertake a collaborative project. Working within the ITP network, these grants must be used towards a project with a collaborative element at either a local, national, or international level.
The aim of these grants is to sustain and grow connections across the network, fostering partnerships between fellows from different countries or institutions and supporting collaborations involving UK partner and British Museum colleagues.
A big thank you to all fellows who kindly took the time to complete the legacy projects needs assessment survey. The purpose of the survey is to ensure that future projects and programmes remain relevant, responsive and impactful. By gathering feedback from the network, we are able to understand how our current legacy projects are being received and to identify areas that may benefit from further development. Thank you to all our fellows for supporting this, and we look forward to sharing the results of the survey in the new year.
We intend to return to the Museums Association Conference once again in 2026, which will be held in Birmingham! Last December the ITP team had an away day to Birmingham to get to know the museum and the area and we’re very excited to return there in late 2026 for the MA Conference. More information about this will be shared when more details about the conference are announced. Stay tuned for calls for applications later this year!
Over the next 12 months, we hope that the ITP continues to support and engage our network. We hope you can help us celebrate 20 years of the International Training Programme through partnerships, connections and collaboration.
