Icon Chair of the Board of Trustees James Grierson summed up a year of activity at the Icon AGM on 21st October 2020. Read the full text of his speech below and download the accompanying slides.
Good afternoon and welcome to the 16th Icon Annual General Meeting. I hope that most of you were able to enjoy the fascinating session on the Palace of Westminster Restoration and Renewal project earlier.
Turning now to the overview of the past year, we begin with Covid-19, which has changed and disrupted life for everyone in this country. Icon’s role is to be the staunchest champion of cultural heritage and we have, throughout and from the very early days days of the crisis, been determined to make the very best of the situation we all find ourselves in. And Icon received many plaudits for the purposeful and helpful way that Icon responded. I just want to record how impressed I was with the wonderful commitment and professionalism shown both by the Icon team and the wider membership. I think you should all feel a sense of pride in the dedication, ingenuity and fellowship that has been so strongly on show.
Board of Trustees
Let me now turn to the more usual business of the meeting, starting with the Board. Since our last AGM in December we have welcomed Duygu Camercuoglu, Adam Klups, Claire Fry and Pierrette Squires as newly elected trustees as well as Martin Kirke and James Murphy as new co-opted trustees.
I’d like to thank all our trustee board members for their contribution and commitment over the past year, both at board meetings and for their diligent and positive work in committees and task & finish groups. Beyond our new board induction session in January we have now had a number of meetings - sadly but manageably, all of the online variety - and I think we’re all looking forward to a time when we can actually be in a room together. What I can say is that I’ve been most impressed by the dedication and professionalism displayed by all the trustees – good people working hard for the Icon community.
We also say goodbye to Trustees Ruth Howlett, Sarah Cove, Megan de Silva and Jenni Williamson who very kindly agreed to stay on for an extra year as vice chair. Thanks to all of them for consistent, long term and valuable support to the governance of Icon. My thanks also to Sophie Rowe who, I’m delighted to say, has accepted my invitation to succeed Jenni as Vice Chair.
And I would like to take this opportunity, formally, to thank my predecessor Siobhan Stevenson for her support in enabling me to make a purposeful and, I hope, productive start. Whilst there are always new challenges to tackle, the role I came into was very calm and efficient and, reassuringly for me, with no fires to put out. Ten months on I’m in a much better position to understand all that you did for Icon in your time as Chair.
Strategic Activity
Turning now to some of marvellous work has been done in the year underpinning our strategic aims of advocacy, excellence and engagement:
Groups
The beating heart of Icon, joined this year by new networks for Environmental Sustainability and Northern Ireland. We completed, in a very sensible and pragmatic way, a review process guided patiently by Frances Graupner and supported by the Group Chairs. This was a positive step forward in governance terms but, important though that was, I’d like to recognise in particular the work done within Groups themselves to support one another, to influence, to champion high standards of conservation and, above all, to create output for the wider community in what became known as the Conservation Together at Home series. A truly exceptional achievement.
Events
This was a year which also saw, whilst events in person were still possible, two very significant conferences, The Recent Advances in Glass & Ceramics Conservation in partnership with the British Museum and ICOM-CC and the Icon triennial conference in Belfast last June. The question of what we do in the future in terms of conferences is still up in the air, especially in the light of what we have experienced thanks to the Coronavirus, but a small task and finish group is diligently working on this question at the moment.
Advocacy
Next I want to mention the effective advocacy work led by Sara and Anni. Lobbying, influencing, advocating for our shared values, for good practice and for a responsible approach to heritage and its care at a difficult time. A great deal has been achieved even if this is often, necessarily, behind the scenes. But to list a few things; getting DCMS to specifically include conservation within their focus for support, playing a meaningful role in developing a commitment to environmentally sustainable conservation, and lobbying effectively for the importance of conservation in relation to restructuring taking place in our major institutions.
Our communications generally have taken a significant step forward. I’m particularly impressed with our new Impact Report which I think is going to prove far more effective as a communications tool than just describing our impact in prose within the annual report. And we have made our key messages available on the website – factsheets that can be downloaded and used by members in their own advocacy.
Professional standards
It was a privilege to take part in the extremely successful series of mini-conferences to mark the 20th anniversary of accreditation but I would like to commend also the very successful introduction of the new pathway membership category which has been designed to support momentum and progress towards accreditation. I also want to pay tribute to Mel Houston and Lorraine Finch and their respective committee colleagues and contributors to the review of professional standards, judgement & ethics and to the development of a new ethical guidance. Icon is, in major part, a standards organisation and I think we can be very proud of the rigour with which Icon develops and maintains its accredited conservator/restorer status – something underscored by the excellent work done on the Accreditation brand.
Membership
This has also been a period marked by significant work around Membership.
The long awaited Conservation Register, once it had settled down and significant numbers of entries had been populated, reveals itself as a very powerful tool in enabling conservators to present their profiles to the wider world and in enabling heritage owners and commissioners to find people with the highest levels of skill. Michael has been working hard to promote the register with stakeholders and through prominent advertisements in key publications. I would commend the enhanced listing to members currently working in institutions. Times like these underscore the importance of developing your profiles and communicating your expertise.
The register is but one part of a busy programme of activity encompassing a new membership development strategy and a replacement of our CRM system to make the management and administrative aspects of membership much more efficient, much more sophisticated.
Annual Report and Accounts
All of this work is underpinned by sound financial management and I would like to pay tribute to Peter Martindale as Chair of the Finance Committee, to the committee members, and to Simon Green, ably supported by John Speed of JS2.
As the Annual Report & Accounts show Icon finished the year with a deficit of just over (£32,000) in terms of unrestricted funds, and reserves of £140,000, quite a long way short of the £460,000 or six-months reserves that we aspire to over the next few years. We also began the current year with a deficit budget which we felt was prudent in the context of the Covid 19 environment and, here, John Speed’s feel for our numbers and comparisons across the sector has been very helpful. Importantly, however, whilst we did not budget for philanthropic support, we did broaden the range of strategic objectives to encompass income generation.
What I can relay to you, as a new Chair, is that Icon’s costs are managed extremely tightly and a more comfortably funded future is going to be about income generation rather than cost -cutting. So to conclude, whilst the longer-term impact of coronavirus remains unclear, Icon has I feel, if I may be allowed to express it this way, had a good Covid, both as an organisation and, even more importantly, as a membership.
Plowden Medal
I’ll finish with a couple of bits of information that touch on the ideas of excellence, profile and recognition. We have been working closely with the Royal Warrant Holders Association about the future management of the Plowden Medal process and I’d take this opportunity to invite you all to think about who you might wish to nominate for consideration by the Plowden committee as deserving this high accolade. In related vein it gives me great pleasure to share the news with you, for those who haven’t already heard this, of confirmation in the birthday honours of a richly-deserved MBE for Carole Milner who, apart from being Icon’s founding chair, was herself a Plowden medal winner and remains an indefatiguable champion of conservation and heritage. So, as we congratulate Carole, and whilst you all reflect on potential Plowden nominations do consider, also, other people in Conservation that you feel might be put forward for an official honour. Maybe, with a bit of coordination we can help Conservation attract more recognition through the honours process.
See a summary of Icon's impact for the year or read our full Impact Report.
Icon members are the heart of the conservation sector, working to protect and care for cultural heritage in museums, in private collections and wherever else it might be found. We’re here to make a positive change for the things we value – so get involved and help us take this forward!
