#IHBCAberdeen2022: A School volunteer’s ‘thanks to all’… with a note on origins and delivery

Volunteers are crucial to our Annual Schools – not least for our 2022 Aberdeen School (15-18/06) which to date has reached 253 practitioners and secured 2.4 million impressions on twitter – so Frances Swanston IHBC, Associate at HESPR company ICENI, has offered a short review of her experience on the School Committee.

… Roll on 4 years and add in a pandemic. We have made it through!…

Frances Swanston IHBC writes:

It all started after a good amount of red wine in Belfast City Hall: ‘Could we get people to come all the way to Aberdeen for an IHBC Annual School?’.

We knew that Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City are very fortunate to have dedicated conservation teams and a City Heritage Trust that comprised a group of committed IHBC members who were keen to show what Aberdeen had to offer.  It seems a lifetime ago, back in 2018 that we met in a pub in Inverurie to start thinking about conference themes.

It felt appropriate given our location and our relative remoteness in the UK, that we focussed on the theme of ‘heritage on the edge’.  But we wanted it to be more than just about the challenges heritage faced in remote parts of the UK.  We wanted it to be an opportunity for people to see for themselves what a beautiful and heritage-rich part of the UK Aberdeenshire is and to offer fellow IHBC enthusiasts something new and of value.

Roll on 4 years and add in a pandemic. We have made it through!

The joy in seeing the conference come together (technical and political hitches aside) and to see fellow IHBC members in person felt like a great achievement. The challenges set by the pandemic and the adaptions we have all made meant that we were able to offer a hybrid conference of live/recorded/in person and virtual presentations – something that hadn’t been done before at an IHBC School.

All of the speakers were informative and engaging with a complementary mix of Aberdeen context and national and international perspectives.  Listening to Laura Sinclair Willis speak from the Falkland Islands about the heritage challenges on South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands gave a new meaning of heritage on the edge.  Equally Egle Rindzeviciute talking about whether trenches made by Russian invading forces at Chernobyl in February this year should be preserved as part of Ukrainian nuclear heritage gives a new perspective on the future of threatened heritage on the edge.

Thank you for being a part of IHBC Aberdeen 2022.’

See previous digital thanks and roundups for the tours HERE  and the blended Day School and virtual IHBC Heritage MarketPlace HERE, and the summary of our reach into the twittersphere HERE.

See also the general thanks to all HERE.

See more NewsBlogs on the 2022 School HERE and on IHBC25, the IHBC’s 25th anniversary Year HERE.

See more on Frances’ work with ICENI HERE

See more in HESPR and ICENI

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