The IHBC has launched its new application forms specially designed to help those seeking to become Associates of the IHBC, our new membership category aimed at helping built and historic environment conservation practitioners progress more easily towards full accredited membership of the institute by offering recognition in conservation skills that reflect their own primary area of specialist practice.
IHBC Membership Secretary Paul Butler said: ‘Associate membership serves as a critical new ‘stepping stone’ to full membership of the IHBC, where multi-disciplinary conservation skills are tested, recognised and supported through CPD.’
‘To help cultivate a person’s multi-disciplinary competences in conservation, we offer Associate membership in three membership sub-categories: Evaluation, Management and Intervention. These correspond to generic areas of conservation practice – what we call the IHBC’s ‘Areas of Competence’ – that reflect and encompass more traditional disciplines involved in the understanding, care and enhancement of our valued places’.
‘With the launch of these new application forms – which we have tailored for applicants seeking particular sub-categories of Associate membership – the IHBC can offer another tier of career and learning support for practitioners. And this new tier is captured in the Associate’s post-nominals, ‘AssocIHBC’.
IHBC Director Sean O’Reilly said: ‘Our new category of Associate membership reflects our response to a clear need in the sector, one adopted at our AGM back in 2013. This new membership category extends our capacity to support practitioners from all backgrounds as they develop recognisable and specialist knowledge in conservation principles, practice and advice. We all know that conservation is an interdisciplinary practice that depends on multi-disciplinary skills, and this new category responds to the reality that people typically develop multi-disciplinary skills on a foundation of experience wrought in a single discipline’.
Kate Kendall, IHBC’s LETS Liaison Officer responsible for member and volunteer support across the IHBC’s learning, education, training and standards operations, said: ‘The new Associate category provides Affiliate members with the opportunity of a new ‘stepping stone’ to full membership. For affiliates that feel the full membership application might be a step too far at the moment then this could be the approach for you. Taking some of the pressure off is the fact that you are able to focus on the area of competence that best reflects your core practice and skills base, whether it corresponds to evaluation, management or intervention in the built and historic environment.’
‘On achieving accreditation as an Associate, your conservation credentials can be acknowledged by virtue of the ‘AssocIHBC’ post-nominals. You then have the opportunity to focus on the areas you need to reinforce your knowledge to attain full membership in the long term.’
The IHBC writes:
The three categories of Associate members are best described as follows:
Evaluation: Accreditation as an IHBC Associate in ‘Evaluation’ means that you should describe yourself as an ‘IHBC Associate, accredited in conservation practice that evaluates change in the built and historic environment’.
Management: Accreditation as an IHBC Associate in ‘Management’ means that you may describe yourself as an ‘IHBC Associate, accredited in conservation practice that manages change in the built and historic environment’.
Intervention: Accreditation as an IHBC Associate in ‘Intervention’ means that you should describe yourself as an ‘IHBC Associate, accredited in conservation practice that generates change in the built and historic environment’.
Download the forms that reflect best your primary area of practice:
Evaluation: which typically represents skills sets associated with the activities of historians, archaeologists, historic buildings inspectors and advisers, some surveyors and others involved in determining the nature and cultural values of the built and historic environment
Management: which is typically for planners, conservation officers, some project managers and building preservation trust officers and heritage site and city managers, and others involved in managing change in the built and historic environment
Intervention: which reflects skills sets of architects, engineers, urban design and regeneration specialists, as well as some developers, crafts and trades people, contractors, project managers and building preservation trust officers, and others involved in work that generates change in the built and historic environment
