ACR Conference 2021

Welcome and Introductions

10am – 10.15am BST, 15 June 2021 ‐ 15 mins

Session 1: Positive Resilience in Conservation

Keynote address: Siân Wynn-Jones

10.15am – 10.35am BST, 15 June 2021 ‐ 20 mins

Session 1: Positive Resilience in Conservation

The Power of Purpose for Positive Resilience

Siân will focus on what positive resilience is and how it impacts on organisational and individual purpose. Highlighting what the individual does and how they can influence and bring about change. Looking at the skills for sustainability and how the conservation professionals innate abilities to reflect and review options, and be creative are within the conservators toolkit to help meet the demands of an ever changing world. What next for their role as a conservator?

Positive impact - Making a difference working together

10.35am – 11.05am BST, 15 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 1: Positive Resilience in Conservation

During the first lockdown Ian Watson, Ruth Stevens, Anne-Marie Miller and Victoria Stevens decided to meet on Zoom as a mutual support group. We knew each other from either working together or meeting in the course of our work and becoming friends. At the time working was becoming very isolated and sometimes stressful – some were busy, others not so. We thought if we could share work, inspiration and ideas we could get through the difficulties with our minds and businesses intact. This regular contact led to the realisation that we all wanted to work more collaboratively, and the CIC grew from that desire. 
Each conservator has brought a different talent and personality to the group, which we think has made the CIC more robust and resilient. Our roles reflect our different strengths and we are also supportive of each other. 

We will discuss our individual journeys through the process of initial contact to setting up a business together, our motivations, how inspiring that has been for us individually, and why we think we can achieve more as a group of conservators working together with a single focus. 

We’ve had our ups and downs, had to tackle some difficult decisions and learnt new ways of working. But, despite the many distractions we all have to cope with, we have found time and energy to bring to this new collaborative project because we think it is an important and meaningful endeavour. 

‘Just walk away’

11.05am – 11.35am BST, 15 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 1: Positive Resilience in Conservation

On 28th October the National Ironwork Group (NHIG) and the Icon Metals Group organised a webinar, ‘Up to standard or down to price’ which discussed the problem facing freelance conservator-restorers when faced with a ‘bad brief’. https://nhig.org.uk/events/event/nhig-with-icon-conversations-build-understanding-tendering/ The advice from experienced (and possibly more financially secure) conservator-restorers was to simply ‘walk away’. But how are the less experienced conservator-restorers, who are anxious to gain work and not alienate potential clients, to respond? Helen Hughes ACR has run her own consultancy for the last 10 years looks at this problem and offers solutions and negotiation tactics to maintain good relations with potential clients, and possibly win the contract without loss of professional integrity and lowering of standards. She recommends various strategies such as defining company Terms & Conditions on websites, sharing examples of previous projects, and the use of existing conservation standards, particularly the recently published BSI/European Standard BS EN 17429:2020 Conservation of Cultural Heritage – Procurement of Conservation Services & Works, to negotiate solutions to this problem. But remember the words of the wise, sometimes it is best just ‘to walk away’.

Positive Thinking: Building Personal Resilience with Catherine Rees

2pm – 3pm BST, 15 June 2021 ‐ 1 hour

Session 2: Building Personal Resilience

Building Personal Resilience 

In this interactive workshop, we will explore ways to build our personal resilience and wellbeing, in an increasingly complex and ever-changing landscape. We will explore different models of resilience, coping strategies and ways to develop a positive outlook.

Breakout Discussions

3pm – 4pm BST, 15 June 2021 ‐ 1 hour

Session 2: Building Personal Resilience

Doing a Professional Doctorate: Motivation, Means and (mis)Management

10am – 10.30am BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 3: Building Positive Resilience

Doing a Professional Doctorate: Motivation, Means and (mis)Management

Professional doctorates (DProf) have been around since the 1990s and are now offered in a wide range of subjects including medicine, education, engineering, business and art practice. They offer an alternative to the traditional PhD for professionals who wish to investigate areas of their own practice. Various models exist with the most common being a programme that includes taught modules followed by a period of independent study, and the submission of a substantial thesis often in the form of a dissertation and portfolio of work. 

In this presentation Alison Lister will provide an overview of professional doctorates, including their potential value to conservation, and describe her experiences as a first year student on the DHeritage programme offered by the University of Hertfordshire. She will also briefly outline the topic of her research into the challenges and opportunities of private practice.

A Freelance Perspective: 2020, a curate's egg?

10.30am – 11am BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 3: Building Positive Resilience

A Freelance Perspective: 2020, a curate's egg?

As we all know March 2020 to the present has been a very strange time. With 60% of conservators working in some form of private practice, this paper/discussion will look at some of the challenges that the past year has presented to those who work outside the structures of museums, galleries, archives and education. As freelance conservators working in different specialisms with differing business set-ups, Peter as a public limited company and Emily as a sole trader, both have experienced the difficulties that a country wide pandemic results in. In a year like no other both have received different supports from the Welsh Government funds (there are still over three million people countrywide that have had no help) and experienced turbulent workflows. This paper will discuss their experiences, how they have adapted their work practices by ‘pivoting’, and how working with each other and other conservators, has helped them get through. Looking forward, they consider what the future might hold, and how they can adapt to the broader challenges that coming out of lockdown are likely to present.

Peter J David ACR [email protected]

Emily O’Reilly ACR [email protected]

Maslow’s ‘needs must’ management during lockdown

11am – 11.30am BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 3: Building Positive Resilience

Maslow’s ‘needs must’ management during lockdown

Covid 19, and the resulting lockdowns, have changed the way the heritage sector has had to work. This paper will explore how Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ has been tested during lockdown, and how we have adapted our management style, both self-management and when applied to others, to reflect this. By focussing on Maslow’s theory, the paper will use personal examples to demonstrate how a ‘needs must’ approach has evolved, and how it has been of benefit during these challenging times. Maslow’s 1943 theory suggests that humans are motivated to address certain needs, in a certain order, at certain times in their life. Maslow describes a five tier model of human needs. These include basic needs (1. Food and clothing; 2. Safety); psychological needs (3. Love and belonging; 4. Esteem) and finally self-fulfilment needs (5. Self-actualization). This theory, later adapted and expanded in the 1960s and 1970s, has many critics but it will be shown to be a useful lens through which to view the recent lockdowns and the effect on individual and team behaviours. This will allow for an honest and thought-provoking exploration of the different human needs and how they manifested themselves during lockdown.

Discussion: What are your development needs?

11.30am – 12pm BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 3: Building Positive Resilience

Talking Threads at the Pitt Rivers Museum: Community Engagement and Documentation in a Pandemic

2pm – 2.30pm BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 4: Building Positive Resilience

Talking Threads at the Pitt Rivers Museum: Community Engagement and Documentation in a Pandemic

Talking Threads is a project that integrates museum documentation and community engagement. It aims to enhance photographic and written documentation of selected textile collections in ways that are helpful for weaving practitioners, specialists and interested members of originating communities. This presentation illustrates the tools, techniques and platforms that the project is utilising to keep the conversations engaging as well as meaningful. In light of the Covid-19 pandemic and global restrictions on travel and in-person visits, it was vital that the project adapted to the circumstances. By making use of digital communication technology that is accessible for the communities, the project team attempt to create an experience as close to an in-person research visit as possible. A multi-camera view complete with live-streaming microscope is set up, mostly using the existing equipment in the conservation lab. Simultaneously, it is important to consider the digital divide: the varying degrees of internet access in different communities, and have a flexible and adaptive attitude to these communication tools. The team have also seized the opportunity to get creative with producing informative, dynamic and engaging content on social media to highlight different aspects of the textiles collection, aiming to engage and capture the imagination of the wider public, especially during the closure of the museum.

The Show Must Go On: The International Touring Programme at the NPG during the COVID19 Pandemic

2.30pm – 3pm BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 4: Building Positive Resilience

The Show Must Go On: The International Touring Programme at the NPG during the COVID19 Pandemic

In recent years the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG) has embarked on an ambitious programme of international touring exhibitions. When the Covid-19 lockdown was announced in the UK in March 2020, one exhibition was in Dubai, another was partially installed at a UK venue, a third was part way through conservation preparation, and a fourth was under development. This talk will examine how the Conservation Department at the NPG dealt with the impact of the Covid-19 world pandemic on the international touring programme, focussing on two shows: Tudors to Windsors and Icons and Identities. The paper will cover:

•  Conservation documentation and communication with venues when physical couriering is not permitted.
• Getting to grips with remote installations across continents and time zones, including condition checking via video link.
• The challenges of socially distancing at work when preparation of art works involves art handlers, frame and paintings conservators all working in one space.

Co-presented by Alexandra Gent ACR and Polly Saltmarsh ACR.

Hosting a Lockdown Internship: A True Test of Resourcefulness, Adaptability and Collaboration

3pm – 3.30pm BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 4: Building Positive Resilience

Hosting a Lockdown Internship: A True Test of Resourcefulness, Adaptability and Collaboration

In November 2019 the British Library agreed to host an intern; the first time in collaboration with ICON, and I volunteered to undertake the supervision of this partnership and learning experience with high hopes. As you might expect, I planned to build her bench skills with a repertoire of treatments and decision-making on varied collection items, support her with training and model the all-important communication with stakeholders about treatment strategies and guide her through the intricacies of working for a national institution. Little did we know that the world- not only of conservation but everything that we knew- would be utterly changed in a matter of months. I’d like to take the opportunity to share with fellow ACR’s, the incredible working partnerships and creative approaches that we took, not only to deliver a useful and engaging experience to our emerging conservator, but to embrace the unknown and re-examine the traditional internship experience of which we are all familiar. We rebuilt it in the face of a lockdown of home-working and schooling, leaps in technology and social media and the rapidly changing role of the conservator as collaborator, project manager, innovator and problem-solver so that our intern could truly emerge ready for whatever the new workplace might offer.

 

Q&A, and Chair Conclusion

3.30pm – 4pm BST, 16 June 2021 ‐ 30 mins

Session 4: Building Positive Resilience