Context 165 - August 2020

52 C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 Twitter, polls and handouts, including a brochure on IHBC annual schools – Brighton 2021, Aberdeen 2022 and Swansea 2023 – and dedicated CPD certificates. We even encouraged delegates to explore the GoToWebinar resource centre, with its papers, case studies, videos, training and webinars. Also highlighted was the opportunity to get first-hand experience of the GoToWebinar platform through a free trial, noting that that was how we started our familiarisation with the platform. Such technical CPD was on offer, and as free as they wanted it to be, for delegates seeking to extend their skills in digital events and training. Accessing conservation-specific CPD support through the school was encouraged as a way to maximise formal benefits from a school session charge that started at as little as £15 plus VAT. This included guidance directed more to the early career practitioners or entry-level delegates. It suggested, for example, how CPD hours might be extended by building on the online content: examining speakers’ profiles and writings (both professional and via social media), starting with the school’s website. It also highlighted the learning available through the online access to the IHBC’s 2020 Yearbook , not least the Yearbook ’s foreword from Layla Moran MP. She introduced both of the virtual school sessions and by the time you read this will be established, we hope, as chair of the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Conservation, Places and People, supported by the IHBC. NewsBlog archives for posts on the virtual school and Brighton schools for 2020 and 2021 were also signposted. CPD support following on from the event itself included recorded sessions; records of contributions by and feedback from participants and on social media; event analytics; and as updates on plans for the 2021 school in Brighton, where the most challenging themes and issues will continue to be explored. The entire virtual school experience was to support leaning, for everyone from those old hands in digital learning and social media, to the approximately 15 per cent who had not engaged with webinars before. As a service from the IHBC, the 2020 Virtual School was designed to offer delegates dedicated CPD support opportunities because the planned 2020 school could not happen. It also helped our corporate skills, while very usefully supplementing our income in a disturbingly lean year. But that approach can never replace our own IHBC school traditions and legacies precisely because the living experience and learning outcomes in real life are so fundamentally different. Our challenge now is to devise the format for the Brighton 2021 school that can bring together the strengths of the real in synergy with the opportunities offered by the virtual. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk Bovril, the essence of good cooking, puts beef into it: a ghost sign on the side of a shop in Beaconsfield Road, Leicester (Photo: Colin Hyde)