Talosk task: National Heritage Council introduces Ireland’s first traveller heritage strategy to protect culture

The first Traveller Heritage Strategy has been published by the National Heritage Council.
A Traveller-led working group developed the strategy over three years.
The strategy includes funding for heritage projects and a Traveller museum scoping study.
Shelta/Cant language preservation and traditional crafts are key priorities.
The launch coincides with National Heritage Week 2026 themed Heritage at Risk.

Ireland’s first Traveller Heritage Strategy has been published today by the National Heritage Council, setting out a national framework to support Traveller cultural heritage through a Traveller-led working group developed over three years. The strategy aims to direct dedicated funding to heritage projects within the Traveller community, establish a Traveller-led working group to safeguard Traveller language, and undertake a scoping study for a National Centre for Traveller Heritage. The initiative represents the first such strategy since the formal recognition of Irish Traveller as an ethnic minority in 2017.

The preservation of Shelta or Cant, the Traveller language, has emerged as a key priority within the strategy. Community development workers have noted a real lack of investment in Traveller culture and heritage, with the recording, understanding, development and recognition of Shelta as a language in its own right receiving particular attention. The preservation of Traveller skills including paper flower making, beady pockets, sewing and seamstressing has also been identified as crucial for young people to learn these skills so they can remain independent and have another way of earning a living. Travellers have long served as custodians of many precious parts of Irish culture, from tinsmith to the shoes and paper making to the ways in which they engage with environments and animals and traditional contemporary nomadism.

The strategy has been launched ahead of National Heritage Week 2026, which runs from tomorrow to 23 August with this year’s theme, Heritage at Risk, encouraging communities to identify and explore heritage assets, traditions and practices that are vulnerable or under threat. The launch event took place at the National Museum of Ireland with representatives from the Traveller community, the Heritage Council and government departments in attendance. The strategy outlines a transformative journey to address the historical marginalisation of Traveller heritage and culture.

Owen Ward shared. “this is a transformative journey to address marginalisation,”