Conservation and the sustainable management of the Historic Environment

Abstract eng:
This paper aims to explore the implications of a changing heritage conservation curriculum which is embracing wider concepts beyond fabric repair. In the last 15 years there has been a major shift of emphasis towards heritage significance and values, management of the historic environment and sustainability. These are not separate elements: they are interrelated. The Australian Burra Charter was the international spur for the development of significance and values, while the principal driver in the UK was the publication of Power of Place (2000), an English Heritage paper looking at the public’s perceptions of their heritage. The established conservation plan methodology has provided the tools for identifying and measuring a wide set of values, which include social and economic factors as well as environmental. The conservation management plan provides the management tool. It uses the concepts of significance and values to develop it, and can be used to deliver sustainable outcomes. This has had an effect on the course curriculum. Teaching of heritage values has become much more important, and it forms the backdrop to making much more widely informed decisions on conservation of the historic environment, be this basic maintenance and fabric repair, or larger changes and interventions. Rypkema suggests that ‘if we go back to the graphic representation of sustainable development....heritage conservation is, in fact, the only strategy that is simultaneously environmental responsibility, economic responsibility and social/cultural responsibility’ (2009). The ICOMOS Education and Training Guidelines of 1993 are being developed to make much more explicit references to sustainability, and this will have an effect on conservation curricula throughout the world (ICOMOS International Training Committee 2013). This paper will examine how conservation courses are changing and adapting to meet developing needs and expectations, and how the ICOMOS (2013) framework document can address this.

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