Context 161 - September 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 57 for a successor to David Kincaid (who, some months back, notified us of his plan to stand down at the 2020 AGM) as membership secretary, Janice Gooch has offered to take on this critical role. Janice, who will be well known to some as the former lead for our technical panel, will shadow the entire assessment and accreditation process for the next year. CPD and learning support Our professional development (PD) and related training support services, centred most recently on the Membership Application Training Event (MATE) sessions, will now be developed and extended through contributions by two new officers, each targeting specific aspects of CP20. Dr Ramona Usher will lead on delivering the MATE sessions, extending its reach to new constituencies as well as existing ones, in line with our commitments to support accreditation. Sarah Cheng will lead on developing an operating training plan and strategy, conceived under CP20’s ‘Aim B2’ as a ‘training priorities framework [to operate] across committee, branch and other infrastructure’. Voluntary branch networks will be central to all these plans. A linked thread here, also targeting support for local branch training, is the development of a nationally- led resource offering local training through our branches. This will focus on those specialist practice areas of our skills model (‘IHBC’s Conservation Cycle’), recognised as needing informed, expert support of the sort that the IHBC is best placed to offer. As these plans are evolving, do keep an eye out for our NewsBlog updates for progress in all these areas. High-level advocacy Ambitions to raise the profile and impact of the IHBC are absolutely central to CP20. Guidance provided by our communications and outreach committee – led by past chair (and much else) Dave Chetwyn – has provided an unexpectedly fruitful direction. Our corporate ambitions ‘to influence policy, legislation and programmes’ have evolved rapidly in recent months as we have accepted pro bono support to establish an all-party parliamentary group (APPG) to add weight to our public agenda. This political infrastructure will help direct our advocacy at the most overarching levels of the UK’s parliamentary democracy, while also reflecting the UK’s devolved interests. Articulating public benefit The IHBC trustees also have agreed a new initiative to help focus and extend our charitable work. The IHBC Creative Conservation Fund is being developed to coordinate our continuing support for the widest public benefit, and to add new capacity there. The acronym is, admittedly, artificial (Creative is, provisionally, a reduction of the fund’s target areas for conservation: Celebration; Research; Education and Training, Innovation, Vision and Experimentation). The highest purposes of the fund are not only to deliver even more public benefit, but to highlight just how progressive – and creative – the fundamentals of conservation practice actually are. In all this, members will hopefully appreciate just how far their institute’s management infrastructure is from either, on the one hand, the Trumpian gut- and-kneejerk reactive and self- interested approach to leadership (an approach that makes change a giddy ride into chaos, directed by the emotions of a single, wilful ego) and, on the other, the change-averse approach to management that similarly slight thinkers associate with the world of conservation. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk