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British Council

Founded	1934; 90 years ago (1934)
Founder	British government
Type	Cultural institution
Headquarters	1 Redman Place, Stratford, London E20 1JQ, England, United Kingdom
Area served	Worldwide
Product	British cultural and language education
Key people	Paul Thompson (Chair) Scott McDonald (Chief Executive)
Revenue (2020–21)	£924,965,472
Expenses (2020–21)	£1,015,114,434
Website	www.britishcouncil.org

British Council Delhi launch of Mix The City Delhi, 6 April 2017

British Council building in Hong Kong

The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh language in Argentina); encouraging cultural, scientific, technological and educational cooperation with the United Kingdom. The organisation has been called a soft power extension of UK foreign policy, as well as a tool for propaganda.

The British Council is governed by a Royal Charter. It is also a public corporation and an executive non-departmental public body (NDPB), sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Its headquarters are in Stratford, London. Its chair is Paul Thompson and its chief executive is Scott McDonald.

History

1934: British Foreign Office officials created the "British Committee for Relations with Other Countries" to support English education abroad, promote British culture and fight the rise of fascism. The name quickly became the British Council for Relations with Other Countries.
1936: The organisation's name was officially shortened to the British Council.
1938: The British Council opened its first four offices in Bucharest (Romania), Cairo (Egypt), Lisbon (Portugal) and Warsaw (Poland). The offices in Portugal are currently the oldest in continuous operation in the world.
1940: King George VI granted the British Council a Royal Charter for promoting "a wider knowledge of [the United Kingdom] and the English language abroad and developing closer cultural relations between [the UK] and other countries".
1942: The British Council undertook a promotion of British culture overseas. The music section of the project was a recording of significant recent compositions by British composers: E.J. Moeran's Symphony in G minor was the first work to be recorded under this initiative, followed by recordings of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, Bliss' Piano Concerto, Bax's Third Symphony, and Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.

British Council building in Madrid, Spain

1944: In August, after the liberation of Paris, Austin Gill was sent by the British Council to reestablish the Paris office, which soon had tours by the Old Vic company, Julian Huxley and T. S. Eliot.
1946: The British Council collected handicraft products from crafts that were being practised in the British countryside for an "Exhibition of Rural Handicrafts from Great Britain" that travelled to Australia and New Zealand. The majority of the collection was sold to the Museum of English Rural Life in 1960 and 1961.
1948: The British Council sponsored a tour by the Old Vic Theatre Company to Australia and New Zealand. The cast was led by Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, performing a repertoire of three plays: Richard III, The School for Scandal, and Skin of Our Teeth. In Australia, the company gave 179 performances and were seen by over 300,000 people. The tour made a profit of about £40,000.
1984: Kenneth Whitty, Deputy Director of the British Council in Athens, was murdered by militants from the Abu Nidal Organisation.
2007: The Russian Foreign Ministry ordered the British Council to close its offices outside Moscow. The Ministry alleged that it had violated Russian tax regulations, a move that British officials claimed was retaliation over the British expulsion of Russian diplomats allegedly involved with the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. This caused the British Council to cease carrying out all English-language examinations in Russia in January 2008. In early 2009, a Russian arbitration court ruled that the majority of the tax claims, valued at $6.6 million, were unjustified.
2011: On 19 August, a group of armed men attacked the British Council office in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, killing at least 12 people – none of them British – and temporarily took over the compound. All the attackers were killed in counter-attacks by forces guarding the compound. The British Council office was relocated to the British Embassy compound, as the British Council compound was destroyed.
2013: The British Council in Tripoli, Libya was targeted by a car bomb on the morning of 23 April. Diplomatic sources were reported as saying that "the bombers were foiled as they were preparing to park a rigged vehicle in front of the compound gate". The attempted attack was simultaneous with the attack on the French Embassy in Tripoli on the same day that injured two French security guards, one severely, and wounded several residents in neighbouring houses. A jihadist group calling itself the Mujahedeen Brigade was suspected, possibly linked to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Organisation

The British Council is a charity governed by Royal Charter. It is also a public corporation and an executive nondepartmental public body (NDPB), sponsored by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Its headquarters are in Stratford, London. Its chair is Paul Thompson, and its CEO is Scott McDonald.

The British Council's total income in 2014–2015 was £973 million principally made up of £154.9 million grant-in-aid received from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; £637 million income from fees and teaching and examinations services; and £164 million from contracts.

The British Council works in more than 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the UK and the English language; encouraging cultural, scientific, technological and educational understanding and cooperation; changing people's lives through access to UK education, skills, qualifications, culture and society; and attracting people who matter to the future of the UK and engaging them with the UK's culture, educational opportunities and its diverse, modern, open society.

In 2014–2015, the British Council spent: £489 million developing a wider knowledge of the English language; £238 million encouraging educational cooperation and promoting the advancement of education; £155 million building capacity for social change; £80 million encouraging cultural, scientific and technological cooperation; and £10 million on governance, tax and trading expenses.

Notable activities

English and examinations

The British Council offers face-to-face teaching in more than 80 teaching centres in more than 50 countries.

Three million candidates took UK examinations with the British Council in more than 850 towns and cities in 2014–2015.

The British Council helps to run the global IELTS English test

The British Council jointly runs the global IELTS English-language standardised test with the University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations and IDP Education Australia. Over 2.5 million IELTS tests were delivered in 2014–2015.

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)

In 2014, the British Council launched its first MOOC, Exploring English: Language and Culture, on the UK social learning platform FutureLearn. This was accessed by over 230,000 people.

English for peace

"Peacekeeping English" is a collaboration between the British Council, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Ministry of Defence to improve the English-language skills of military personnel through the Peacekeeping English Project (PEP). PEP is helping train approximately 50,000 military and police service personnel in 28 countries, amongst them Libya, Ethiopia and Georgia.

Mobility programmes

Education UK

In 2013, the British Council relaunched the global website Education UK for international students interested in UK education. The site receives 2.2 million visitors per year and includes a search tool for UK courses and scholarships, advice and articles about living and studying in the UK.

Erasmus+

From 2014 to 2020, the British Council and Ecorys UK jointly administered almost €1 billion of the €14.7 billion Erasmus+ programme offering education, training, youth and sports opportunity for young people in the UK. It was expected that nearly 250,000 people will have undertaken activities abroad with the programme.

Schools

Connecting Classrooms

Over 16,000 schools have taken part in an international school partnership or benefited from teacher training through the British Council Connecting Classrooms programmes.

Arts and culture

ACCELERATE

ACCELERATE was a leadership programme for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the creative arts, run jointly by the British Council and the Australia Council in partnership with Australian state arts agencies, between 2009 and 2016. During that time, 35 people participated in the programme, with many alumni going on to excel in their fields.

UK-India Year of Culture

UK-India Year of Culture official launch image on the façade of Buckingham Palace

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II hosted the official launch of the UK-India Year of Culture on 27 February 2017 at Buckingham Palace, with Indian Finance Minister Arun Jaitley representing Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The British Council worked with the Palace and British-Indian start-up Studio Carrom to project a peacock, India's national bird, onto the facade of Buckingham Palace.

fiveFilms4freedom

In 2015, the British Council launched fiveFilms4freedom, a free, online, 10-day LGBT film festival with the British Film Institute, supported by the UN Free & Equal campaign. It was the first global online LGBT film festival. The festival runs a 24-hour campaign to ask people to watch a movie and show that love is a human right. In 2016, films were viewed by over 1.5m people in 179 countries.

Shakespeare Lives

In October 2015, the British Council announced a global programme with the BBC, British Film Institute, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Shakespeare 400 consortium, the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust and Shakespeare's Globe to celebrate Shakespeare's life and work on the 400th anniversary of this death.

Selector Radio

Selector Radio is a weekly two-hour radio show, produced by Folded Wing for the British Council. Originally launched in 2001, the show is now broadcast in more than 30 countries around the world, connecting a global audience to a wide range of music the United Kingdom has to offer, covering a variety of genres from grime, indie, soul, dance and more. The show features interviews, guest DJ mixes and exclusive live sessions from some of the UK's most exciting artists. It avoids many mainstream acts, in favour of emerging talent and underground styles. It has an estimated listenership of over four million people. The show is currently hosted in the UK by Sian Eleri since 2024 - previous hosts include Jamz Supernova, Goldierocks and Andrea Oliver – and many countries take the English language version of the show and create a new show from the tracks and features, translating the 'links' into the local language.

Cultural and educational exchange with North Korea

The British Council has been running a teacher training programme in North Korea since 2001. In July 2014 the British Council signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) for cultural and educational exchange.

Other activities

Young Creative Entrepreneur Awards

The British Council's Young Creative Entrepreneurs Awards identify and support talented people from across the creative industries, such as the International Young Publisher of the Year, International Young Design Entrepreneur of the Year, International Young Music Entrepreneur of the Year and British Council West Africa Arts Programme ~ Creative Entrepreneurs 2018 awards.

Chairs

The Council has been chaired by:

1934–37 Lord Tyrrell
1937–41 Lord Lloyd
1941–45 Sir Malcolm Robertson
1946–55 Sir Ronald Adam
1955–59 Sir David Kelly
1959–67 Lord Bridges
1968–71 Lord Fulton
1971–72 Sir Leslie Rowan
1972–76 Lord Ballantrae
1977–84 Sir Charles Troughton
1985–92 Sir David Orr
1992–98 Sir Martin Jacomb
1998–2004 Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
2004–09 Lord Kinnock
2010–16 Sir Vernon Ellis
2016–19 Christopher Rodrigues
2019–23 Stevie Spring
2024–present Paul Thompson

Trade unions

Some staff at the British Council are members of unions. UK staff are represented by the Public and Commercial Services Union. Some employees in Japan belong to the General Union.