New Delhi, Feb 15 (PTI) India and the UK have “shared ambitions and goals” in the fields of education, culture and creative economy, and both countries are able to walk together towards inclusive growth and opportunities for the youth, the British Council in New Delhi said.
In an exclusive interview to PTI ahead of the AI Impact Summit here, Alison Barrett, the British Council’s India head, also said the last three years have seen a really “intense strengthening” of the bilateral partnership in a range of different sectors.
“We are the UK’s cultural relations organisation, and at the upcoming AI Summit, a pavilion has been planned, and we will do its education and cultural components,” she said, without elaborating.
Several world leaders, heads of many global tech giants and delegations from various organisations working in the fields of technology, AI and creative economy are gathering in Delhi for the mega event, which will take place from February 16-20.
During the recent interaction held at the organisation’s New Delhi centre, Barrett, Country Director India, British Council, had also shared that eight UK universities would be opening their campuses in India, starting this year.
“The University of Southampton has already opened it in Gurgaon (in July 2025), and it’s the first university to have received approval to open a campus under the University Grants Commission guidelines,” she said.
And, the other eight UK universities have “received the letter of approval too.” “There are three UK universities opening up in GIFT City in Gujarat, two universities in Bengaluru in Karnataka, which is University of Liverpool and University of Lancaster, and three in Mumbai — the University of York, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Bristol,” she told PTI.
According to the Council, the University of Aberdeen and the University of Bristol are likely to officially open the campuses by the summer of 2026.
British Council, in its 92nd year now, has had its presence in India since 1948, and its current building in Delhi, where it has been housed since 1992, was designed by famed Indian architect Charles Correa, while the iconic ‘banyan tree’ art on its facade was done by British artist Howard Hodgkin.
According to a plaque embedded on its wall, it was inaugurated on October 28, 1992, by the then Vice President K R Narayanan.
This building thus also showcases how Correa and Hodgkin’s works represent the spirit of UK-India collaboration, by bringing art and architecture together, said Barrett, whose office is located in this modern edifice in the heart of Delhi.
Terming education and culture as two very “critical sectors” and important pillar in the bilateral ties, she asserted that these two sectors have had a “real boost over the last three years, in a whole range of different ways,” but really deepened by the fact that the National Education Policy has allowed and enabled more UK institutions to collaborate and partner with India.
Also, the India-UK Vision 2035 has enabled education to get a “much higher profile”, because it’s one of the five flagship pillars in the Vision, and so it sets out a range of different priorities that enables us to make the education partnership “a lot more ambitious, and to enable a lot more trend-setting collaboration in the relationship,” she added.
The prime ministers of India and the UK, during their meeting in July 2025 in London, had endorsed the “India-UK Vision 2035” that reaffirmed their shared commitment to unlocking the full potential of a revitalised partnership.
“So I think, we both have shared ambitions, shared goals, we have world-leading systems, world-leading sectors, world-leading expertise, and so we’re able to really learn from each other as we sort of walk together on this journey towards building that inclusive growth and those opportunities for young people,” Barrett said.
The organisation’s India head also emphasised the India-UK Programme of Cultural Cooperation (2025-2030), signed by the two countries in May 2025.
The British Council is named as its “implementing organisation”, working with the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
“So we are the nodal agency that will activate that agreement, working in collaboration with both the culture ministries. And what that commits us to is strengthening the institutional partnerships and collaborations between museums, between arts sector organisations. And it enables more collaborations to happen around capacity building and learning,” Barrett said.
She emphasised that both countries are really “very quickly building opportunities” to speed up growth and inclusive growth.
“As British Council, our role is to cement and help strengthen people-to-people relationship, and we want to ensure that young people in the UK, young people in India, have the opportunity to learn from each other, have the opportunity to build strong connections at a young age so that they can understand the full diversity of India and everything that India has to offer,” Barrett said. PTI KND AMJ AMJ
This report is auto-generated from PTI news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.