Skip to content
Login

Saved for the Nation

Saved for the Nation Picture

The Cultural Value of Conservation

Working with the Textile Conservation Centre at Southampton University, we are working to raise awareness of this pressing agenda, and stimulate deeper thought about the role of conservation amongst policymakers, cultural professionals and within the sector itself.
To see why ensuring future skills in conservation is important, we need go no further than the DCMS’ Icons website: without conservation, we would not have many of the items that the public voted for to represent what it means to be ‘English’.  As the UK’s Institute of Conservation (ICON) puts it, ‘conservation makes an essential contribution to the whole of society, to education, to the advancement of knowledge, to tourism and to the economy; it ensures that our shared heritage is cared for and protected for the benefit, use and enjoyment of the public today and for generations to come’. 

However, funding pressures have led to the closure of several major centres of conservation education. Stakeholders including the major institutions and government must act now, and the role of conservation in the relation to the public realm must be rethought and rearticulated to underline the importance of conservation to our senses of heritage, and identity, and the public realm itself .  As the history and fabric of British identity assumes a new policy importance, it is a major problem that one of the means by which that it can be preserved and rejuvenated is being starved and stifled of talent.  In ten years’ time – with fewer training centres in the UK – where are conservation skills going to come from?

With the Textile Conservation Centre at Southampton University, we are working to raise awareness of this pressing agenda, and stimulate deeper thought about the role of conservation amongst policymakers, cultural professionals and within the sector itself.

Specifically, the work will meet the following aims and objectives:
•    Raise greater awareness among policy-makers and the public of the crisis in conservation education and research
•    Examine the impact that the loss of conservation education would have on major cultural institutions and, more widely, a general sense of national identity
•    Outline how we can best educate conservators in the future
•    Demonstrate the international nature of conservation education and research, and its role in cultural diplomacy
•    Stimulate greater awareness of the value of conservation in general
•    Relate the narrative of conservation education and research to an accompanying publication that will provide the facts and figures of just how important it is

On 12 June, 2008 an interim report on this project was delivered at a summit to be convened by ICON and the TCC at the Courtauld Institute. For further details of 'Planning a Positive Future for Conservation Education in the UK', please visit the ICON website.
  • The provocation paper produced for the event can be downloaded here;
  • and the presentation here.
If you would like to find out more, or share ideas about this project, get in touch.