A New Webinar Series to Explore and Expand on the Traditional 10 Agents of Deterioration
I thought I would share my involvement with the AICCM Preventive Conservation Special Interest Group (PSIG). I am the current convenor of this SIG and I have spent months co-organising an online forum of 10 monthly webinar discussions titled “Agents of Change: 10 Agents over 10 Months”
We launched the series in February 2021 on the topic of:
Temperature and Relative Humidity, and have since run three other agents:
Physical Forces,
Dissociation, and most recently
Light, with the remaining 6 still to come:
Pest,
Pollutants in August,
Theft/ Vandalism and Repatriation in September,
Disaster Response in October,
Covid and Conservation in November and
Mastermind session for the conclusion of the conference in December.
Why 10 Agents over 10 Months
Due to COVID 19, border closures, travel restrictions and the weight of uncertainty our conference in Brisbane for February 2021 had to be redefined. Conferences around the world were turning to online events or postponement. I was committed to provide some form of conference and determined to find a way to deliver an educational program, amongst the uncertainty. Myself and the committee had already begun engaging with keynote speakers and concepts for the conference. So we decided to reinvent the process and hence 10 Agents over 10 Months was created.
I am sure you are all aware of the traditional ten agents of deterioration, and following on from the successful PSIG conference in Melbourne 2019, we wanted to use these agents to highlight new developments, ask challenging questions, make connections with other untraditional risks or agents and provide new insights and strategies to combat the agents of deterioration.
Access
Due to COVID 19 and the changes in how we work and communicate, and the acceptance and access to video conferencing platforms we could now engage with conservators, consultants and experts across the globe to share their knowledge in new ways.
The online forum provided an opportunity to connect and discuss current research, capture relevant issues and broaden our collective knowledge. Access to these experts was exciting and rewarding and in combination and collaboration with our own Australian experts and conservators, I feel we have provided a professional comprehensive online forum.
Each forum has been attended by conservators, collection managers, registrars, archivists, museum volunteers, students and other professions in the GLAM sector, from Australia and across the world. We have had over 1000 people watch the first four in the series - either live or via the recording. These recordings will remain free on the AICCM website. Click here for access.
Coming up
Our next agent is Pests. And I empathise with the many regional organisations in NSW, QLD and Victoria who are dealing with the mouse plague. While mice infestation will not be specifically covered in the presentation, there will be strategies, solutions and new developments for other pests found in museums and galleries across the world. We have developed an Integrated Pest Management survey for individuals and organisation to contribute to the understanding of pest management in Australia. Both registration for the event and the survey can be found here. I hope you tune in.
Registrations for each session will be available on the first of each month. Each of these forums has been intimately developed by myself, Elizabeth and the committee to bring together leaders in the field. Join in for the live webinar and Q&A session that follows.
Acknowledgment
I would like to acknowledge that this series has been co organised with Elizabeth Thompson from Queensland Art Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art. And a fabulous committee of volunteers from QLD and New Zealand. We have all worked hard and contributed in many ways to make this the successful series that it is.
I hope that over the next 6 months we will build upon previous presentations, establish new perspectives and engage, discuss and debate how we manage our agents of deterioration.
