Cultural diversity on Earth is so much more profound, important and fragile than we realise. And it is rapidly crumbling. Neem offers a low cost way to respond at a scale and pace that meets the crisis.

Taking language as a rough proxy for culture – we can expect at least half of all human cultural diversity to disappear in the next few decades. In an age where we champion diversity, let’s just stop and reflect on that for a moment. 

 

We need to respond to this devastation with urgency, pace and scale. We are not. 

 

I suggested Neem a decade ago, but was told by a senior cultural policy actor that culture always changes. True, but we are not witnessing a natural evolution of culture but its wholesale annihilation. It would be both wrong and shortsighted to ignore it.

 

The cultural outputs of millenia of human creativity, artistic and philosophical inquiry are disappearing each day because of man-made conflict, climate change and unfair patterns of economic development. 

 

 

“For communities, it is therefore a matter of basic justice. For humanity as a whole, we must capture the beauty of human possibilities now if we are ever to have an inclusive history of our species”

 

 

We are at a unique moment in the history of humanity, only just past our maximum point in historic cultural diversity – let’s call that peak culture.

 

For a brief few years we have the following monumental opportunity.

 

1. We have a small window in which to act. Vast tracts of irreplaceable knowledge and tradition are still with us.

 

2. The world’s young population have a sense of value in their heritage and want to play a role in documenting and sharing it.

 

3. We have cheap, accessible and decentralised technology to enable remote documentation, sharing and interpretation.

 

Based on these 3 insights and guided by cultural leaders, we apply the latest technology to enable community-led cultural heritage and oral history campaigns.

 

 

Welcome to Neem

Our platform, built from the bottom up with communities, gives those closest to heritage control to document, define, and celebrate these invaluable treasures. 

 

Communities manage their own priorities, campaign dashboards, control their data, and manage their own users. They can host their own existing archives, making them accessible to the public for the first time. 

 

These are the benefits of decentralisation. 

 

A degree of centralisation also offers pace, cost and scale. 

 

For severely under-resourced communities, our platform automatically creates a dedicated webspace and Android APP for every campaign. 

 

Neem also also ensures that software developments and program innovations made in any single campaign benefit all. 

 

Join Us

Sadly, without real financial, political and technical support from majority populations, the need for more action and innovation will only grow. 

 

Neem is just one initiative to hold hands with many – focusing on documentation and accessibility. But we are ambitious and want greater scale, pace and urgency. 

 

Whether you are from a culturally endangered community or a majority population, you can help.

 

Get in touch to start something.