C O N T E X T 1 4 2 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 5 37 planning. It seems that already our Council+, on its own, is helping respond to long-standing imbalances in the representation of members’ gender and age across our planning processes. That alone confirms the benefits to be gained by moving beyond our comfort zones. Evidently, and contrary to much received opinion, the institute and its members have a long history of exploring, investigating and learning from others, to help us make informed and balanced decisions, however difficult they might be. Indeed, for the IHBC it is not so much a matter of the off-quoted challenge of ‘herding cats’, as the need to consolidate decisions around a uniquely extensive network that can inform itself of a huge range of potentially attractive options. Our future thoughts on the matter of looking upward and outward have been prompted by the opportunity, offered by the invitation from the Transylvania Trust, to learn lessons directly from European practitioners. In my next column I will look at what we have to gain, and to offer, where we adopt our ‘looking’ strategy. For now, perhaps, it is enough to pin down just one obvious threat to conservation, at home and abroad, if we do not. International heritage policy-making and practice standards will continue to face the same failings we have seen in the UK if they can not access the kind of interdisciplinary skills sets and perspectives that the IHBC shapes, promotes and regulates. That alone should be sufficient reason to remember that our UK remit is inextricable from its international context. The historic benefit of international links is clear.We use both ICOMOS standards andWorld Bank models in regulating our own members. These offer us both substantial frameworks and a unique international underpinning of our credibility. However, these links have been established through retrofitting our own historic ‘competences’. Clearly those connections would be even more substantial, if – as with the National Occupation Standards for conservation, co-written by the IHBC – we had shaped the international context rather than eased ourselves back into it. Not being familiar with these issues at any international level, recently I asked some IHBC members more closely tied to that scene about the issues that might be considered for our forward planning. John Fidler highlighted the scale of international heritage-linked bodies, drawing attention to nearly 30 ICOMOS scientific committees that might in different ways be relevant. Dennis Rodwell, asked about the specific planning skills available at international levels, said: ‘Planners are barely involved at all: heritage is not seen as a core part of urban planning – barely even as peripheral; and heritage people are detached from urban planning.’ Clearly access to the kind of core skills sets that IHBC membership represents is already severely limited outside the UK’s own heritage planning. Regardless of the details of any future UK engagement with international interests, that can only impact negatively on our interests. Indeed it might be that, outside the UK, heritage planning is so structurally ‘mainstreamed’ into national planning, and out of international heritage, that the institute faces a crisis no less significant than that faced at home. If so, any lessons for the UK would be invaluable. So disseminating our core message – of credible, regulated, interdisciplinary conservation, underpinned by international standards from ICOMOS and theWorld Bank – across international policy-making and decision-taking, might well return even more valuable benefits to us, and help shape national agendas that otherwise seem intractable. In my next column I will look in more detail at what we have to offer, and to gain, from continuing our traditional enthusiasm for looking upwards and outwards. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk IHBC president David McDonald (centre) and Transylvania Trust project director Dave Baxter (right) explaining the restoration of Banffy Castle,Transylvania
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