Announcing the City of London Heritage Harvest

A City wide project to record and share the City of London's intangible cultural heritage (hereafter 'living heritage') in support of HM Government's adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (2003).

Context

The City of London has the greatest concentration of living heritage of any place in the United Kingdom. There are more customs, ceremonies, practices, traditions, songs and stories about the City than any other part of the UK.

In the spring of 2025 HM Government announced the creation of public registers of living heritage for each of the devolved nations. The public register for England is a resource for communities to record and share their living heritage, whether it be a public event of national importance such as The Lord / Lady Mayor's Show, or a private ceremony such as the Loving Cup.

About the City of London Heritage Harvest?

The City of London Heritage harvest is a 1 year project with the following aim and objectives:

Aim

To coordinate the identification, documentation, and submission of the City of London’s intangible cultural heritage to the forthcoming national register (for England) managed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), aligned with the UK’s ratification of the 2003 UNESCO Convention.

Objectives

Raise awareness of the DCMS inventory of intangible cultural heritage among the City institutions
Encourage comprehensive participation in contributing to the intangible cultural heritage register by City institutions
Ensure consistent and high-quality submissions by providing a submission template and guidance to City institutions
Avoid duplication and gaps in recorded heritage
Celebrate and preserve the City’s living traditions and customs through a final report

Frequently Asked Questions:

1. What exactly is Intangible Cultural Heritage (living heritage)?

This question is best answered by comparing examples of tangible and intangible side-by-side that we see, hear, experience in the Square Mile. The City of London Heritage Harvest project is concerned with recording and sharing the types of living heritage in the right-hand column.

Note: This table is not an exhaustive list, rather it provides a few examples among hundreds that exist in the Square Mile (hence this project!):

Tangible Heritage	Intangible or Living Heritage
The Lord Mayor’s Coach	The Lord Mayor’s Show
The Crystal Sceptre	The Silent Ceremony
Guildhall Yard	The Inter-livery Pancake Races
The Band of the Honorable Artillery Company	The march ‘Capitol City’
St Paul’s Cathedral	The United Guilds Service
A Loving Cup	The Loving Cup Ceremony
The Lord Mayor's Tricon hat	The craft skills of a Feltmaker
The great bell at Bow	The folk song Oranges and Lemons
The gavels of the Skinners and Merchant Taylors’ companies	The ceremony of the exchange of gavels

2. When will the project start and finish?

The project will run for 1 year, formally commencing on 7th November at the installation of the 697th Lady Mayor of London. While the public register will be open for submissions from dd.mm.yyyy it is the intention of the project to encourage custodian's of the City's living heritage to submit entries to the public register during Alderwoman Dame Susan Langley's year in office.

3. Who will submit examples of living heritage to the public register?

Living heritage is, by its very nature, grassroots and community centred. Think of village fetes, Maypole ceremonies, Agricultural shows, St George's Day parades. All living heritage exists at community level and it is the community who will be able to submit examples to the public register. The City of London heritage harvest refers to the focal points of its numerous communities as 'custodians', and other participants as 'stakeholders'.

Example: The Lord Mayor's Show Ltd is the 'custodian' of the Lord Mayor's Show; the participants and the public who watch it on BBC 1 or lining the streets in the City are 'stakeholders'.

The City's living heritage has many custodians and certainly many stakeholders. So who takes the lead on submission? How do we avoid multiple uncoordinated submissions for the same living history (e.g., 113 examples of Loving Cup ceremonies)? How do we ensure there are no gaps resulting from a lack of clarity as to who should take a lead on submitting evidence for a particular piece of living heritage?

To address these challenges the project team has created a list of living heritage in the Square Mile, and a list of principal custodians who are identified as the most obvious focal point for capturing evidence and submitting it to the public register. In most cases the project team have already made contact with the principal custodians either directly or through umbrella organisations such as the Livery Committee, the Fellowship of Clerks, the City of London Guide Lecturers Association, the Friends of City Churches and so on.

Principal custodians lead the submission, but they may very well call on other custodians to bring in the heritage harvest. For example: The Friends of City Churches may coordinate the submission of living heritage by and among the City's Churches (e.g., Beating the Bounds).

4. Where can we find the public register?

TBC

5. What sort of evidence does the public register require for submission?

TBC

6. How do we submit evidence?

TBC

7. How do we avoid duplication of effort?

By coordinating with the project team who are keeping a record of all the City's living history, who the principal custodians are, and whether evidence has been submitted to / accepted by the public register.

8. How do we ensure the evidence we capture is of sufficient quality?

TBC

9. Where can we see example of good practice?

TBC

10. Will the City Heritage Harvest project team submit evidence on behalf of the community?

No, the project team's objectives are as listed above. It is for each principal custodian to lead on the submission of evidence for the living heritage which is under their stewardship.

City of London Heritage Harvest