Lumbini: Where Peace Begins with Place

Frazer Macdonald Hay
6 days ago
4 min read

by Frazer Macdonald Hay

Introduction

I was deeply grateful to the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund (CPF) and ICOMOS for the opportunity to contribute to the ICOMOS Annual General Assembly and Scientific Symposium 2025 in Lumbini, Nepal, a place whose serenity conceals a profound lesson about the relationship between peace, place, and humanity.

It was a privilege to share my work on peacebuilding through place alongside heritage professionals, scholars, and practitioners from across the world. I left Lumbini inspired by the generosity, curiosity, and intellectual depth of those I met, and by the clarity of purpose shared among those who see heritage not as static memory, but as an active force for resilience and recovery.

The Uniform November Manifesto

The world is made of places.

Not abstractions, but streets, rooms, and landscapes we inhabit and remember.

Every place holds meaning. Every place holds memory.

Everything we do is placed.

To live, to work, to love, to mourn, all are acts of place.

Places shape identity. They anchor belonging.

They carry the weight of history and the hope of renewal.

Yet we take them for granted.

Public policy forgets them. Private interest erases them. Power neglects them.

To recognise place is to recognise humanity.

To design and protect place is to care,

for memory, for justice, for belonging.

This manifesto is the foundation of everything we do at Uniform November. It guided my talk in Lumbini and continues to shape our practice, a belief that peacebuilding, cultural heritage, and architecture all begin with the recognition that place is the most fundamental unit of human experience.

Peacebuilding Through Place

My presentation, “Culturally Significant Sites as Pivot Points for Peacebuilding in Post-Conflict Environments,” explored how built environments record violence, carry memory, and can serve as instruments for peace.

Drawing from fieldwork in Iraq, Indonesia, and Ukraine, I discussed how places endure, not only as physical sites, but as emotional and social geographies that persist through displacement, reconstruction, and loss.

War leaves its mark not just on people, but on places. Peacebuilding must begin with both.

By reframing the built environment as a peacebuilding actor, we are reminded that design, protection, and reuse of culturally significant sites are not just technical acts; they are ethical and political ones, shaping identity and belonging long after conflict ends.

Lumbini: The Lovely Place

Lumbini ( literally “the lovely” ) is the birthplace of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a living landscape of devotion and reflection.

To walk there is to understand that peace is spatial. It is felt through the ground beneath our feet, in the sound of prayer, in the continuity between past and present.

ICOMOS Nepal’s work in preserving this sacred environment exemplifies how care for place can embody the principles of peace itself, resilience, humility, and continuity.

Heritage and Resilience

The 2025 ICOMOS Scientific Symposium, titled “Perceptions of Heritage and Resilience – Disaster Risk Reduction and Preparedness,” brought together global expertise to address how heritage can confront human and natural crises.

Supported by the Cultural Protection Fund in partnership with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), the symposium explored three vital subthemes:

Navigating and Negotiating Conflict
Withstanding the Forces of Nature for Conservation and Development of Heritage
Leveraging Heritage for Peace

Each session returned to a central truth: that to preserve heritage is to preserve possibility. In every fragile wall or fading archive lies a narrative of endurance — a quiet defiance against erasure.

A Decade of the Cultural Protection Fund

June 2026 will mark ten years since the creation of the Cultural Protection Fund (CPF), a partnership between the British Council and the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

With renewed funding of £7.8 million from the UK Government until March 2026, the CPF will distribute £4.5 million in grants to 44 projects across 17 countries, amplifying the impact of its first decade.

These renewed grants include:

The National Museum of Kenya, delivering education and training to protect the 1.5-million-year-old hominin footprints endangered by climate change-driven erosion.
The Natural Roots Foundation, documenting and sharing indigenous food heritage threatened by environmental change.
Ettijahat, enhancing protection and promotion of intangible cultural heritage in Syria through training, community dialogues, and artistic work.

The CPF continues to lead capacity building, research, and emergency response for heritage protection worldwide, with a forthcoming series of events, publications, and exhibitions marking its tenth anniversary.

“This funding extension is an acknowledgement of the increasing demand for a UK response to the challenges facing our global cultural heritage,”Stephanie Grant, Director, Cultural Protection Fund

The CPF remains one of the most thoughtful and forward-looking heritage initiatives globally. It has been a privilege to support Stephanie Grant and her remarkable team — professionals who continue to blaze a path for others to follow in the field of cultural protection and education.

Reflections: The Work of Lama Abboud

Among the many people whose work resonates deeply with the Uniform November Manifesto is Lama Abboud, a Syrian architect and heritage consultant, and the Founder of the Turathuna Foundation.

Turathuna is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to safeguarding Syria’s cultural heritage within the disaster risk management framework. Through training in First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis, awareness campaigns, and documentation efforts, Lama and her team demonstrate that care for place is an act of human resilience.

Her commitment exemplifies what it means to work at the intersection of heritage, identity, and recovery — the very ground on which sustainable peace must stand.

Closing Thoughts

As we approach the tenth anniversary of the Cultural Protection Fund, it is worth remembering that heritage protection is not only about the past, it is about how we build futures.

In Lumbini, surrounded by the quiet persistence of history, I was reminded again that peace begins with place.Each street, each ruin, each room of memory carries the weight of what we were, and the hope of what we might yet become.

To protect place is to protect humanity.To design with care is to build peace.

Frazer /Uniform November

Architecture | Memory | Violence | Peacebuilding