Rethinking the Commonwealth institute

Abstract

At one stage in the mid-1990s major cuts in British Government funding threatened the Commonwealth Institute with closure. The Institute's mission was to promote the Commonwealth within the United Kingdom, but hindsight suggests that the impact of a succession of crises might have been smaller if it had assumed a broader role in promoting the Commonwealth beyond the UK. The Institute's strategic plan, Commonwealth 21, explicitly incorporates this broader role of engaging other member countries in educational, business, the arts and public affairs programmes. The author identifies the challenge for the future as embracing the new communications and information technologies as a means of delivering relevant programmes to a Commonwealth-wide audience.