Kingsley Aikins shares insights on the Celtic diaspora and why connecting global communities is key to regional growth.
As the founder of The Diaspora Institute and a global leader in diaspora engagement, Kingsley Aikins has spent decades helping countries, cities, and regions unlock the power of their people abroad. On April 25th, Kingsley will join us in Cornwall for the Interceltic Business Forum, where he’ll moderate a roundtable featuring some of the most influential figures in the Celtic diaspora world.
Ahead of the forum, we spoke with Kingsley about the mission behind The Diaspora Institute, the untapped potential of Celtic connections, and what it really takes to turn global goodwill into local impact.
The Diaspora Institute was recently established by me and my colleague Dr. Martin Russell. We have both worked for many years in the area of diaspora engagement and have decided to set up this new entity with the objective of teaching, training, research and consultancy with countries, regions and cities. My background is that I ran Ireland's largest diaspora organisation The Ireland Funds for over 20 years and was based in Australia and the US.
My colleague, Martin, has a doctorate in diaspora studies from the Clinton Institute in University College Dublin. Working together during the last 15 years we have worked with over 50 countries helping them develop policies, projects and programmes of diaspora engagement. We now want to bring this to a wider global audience. The interest in the topic has increased dramatically, particularly recently. We see countries, and particularly small countries, realising that they need their global friends now more than ever and their diasporas can constitute such friends.
The Celtic Diaspora are an interesting example of the distinction between states and nations. States are lines on a map, but nations are a global notion, and they are all about having a sense of belonging. We believe in the concept of Diaspora Capital which countries, cities and regions all possess in various degrees and is made up of three flows - flows of people, flow of knowledge and flows of money.
Technology and communications have changed everything. In the old days your geography dictated your identity, but now you can lead a hyphenated life and be engaged with more than one country. Finally, we can now say - geography is history. In terms of how regions can effectively tap into their diasporas the first thing they have to ask about their diaspora is - who are they, where are they and what are they doing?
The also have to be able to develop three key elements as follows - a strong and compelling case (the why of diaspora engagement), a constituency of interest (the who) and strong and effective leadership (the key people who will make it happen). All three are important, and the critical element is the third one - leadership.
Collaboration amongst leading figures in the Celtic diasporas is vital for the simple reason that diaspora engagement is a non-competitive industry - people who are going to engage with one region have no interest in the other regions so it makes a lot of sense to connect collaborate and communicate to the maximum which is why this Forum is so important. I have to admit that I am a founder member of an organisation called CASE which stands for Copy and Steal Everything....!!!!
With my Irish hat on, I can point to many examples of how successful diaspora engagement has had a massive impact in Ireland. However, everything has to start at nothing. The non-profit I worked for, The Ireland Funds, started with a black tie fundraising dinner in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York which was so unsuccessful that the only reason we held a second dinner a year later was to pay for the first dinner.....!!!!! And that's $700 million dollars ago. Nobody starts a large organisation.
It is good to learn from other organisations and follow a precise process, which consists of identifying the key people in the diaspora who can make a massive difference. We developed a unique 4-step process of Research, Cultivation, Solicitation and Stewardship for bringing people on a journey of total ignorance of what is possible to a position of passionate zealotry and that takes a lot of energy, enthusiasm and empathy.
Given Cornwall's mining history, it might be apt to say that in Cornish diaspora engagement you are mining for coal and mining for diamonds.
Join us at the Interceltic Business Forum in Cornwall on April 25th and be part of the growing movement to harness the power of diaspora for regional growth.
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🗣 Kingsley Aikins, The Diaspora Institute
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