14 C O N T E X T 1 7 4 : D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 From the beginning, personal contact was maintained through the regional groups and they, too, remain as an effective vehicle for sharing our joint experience. However, it is the annual school which brings us together as a truly national body, and the very first one took place the month after the launch of Context. It was held over three days at University College, Oxford, with a programme organised by Roger France. It was notable for the presentation by Peter Rumble, the chief executive designate of the new Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, which was to be established under the more friendly title of English Heritage on April Fools’ Day the following year. The association went from strength to strength over the next decade. After heated debate, it expanded its initial membership from local authority conservation officers to embrace all those involved in the profession. By 1986 it had been invited to give evidence to the House of Commons Environment Committee and it has remained a prominent consultee ever since. In September 1991, in celebrating its first 10 years, Chris Smith as chairman set out his vision for the future. This included the need to seek charitable status, and the establishment of a permanent office and secretariat. The following year, the idea of becoming a professional institute was first floated, and in due course a working party was established to explore the complicated statutory requirements of such a radical move. It was perhaps fitting that the annual school for 1996 was again in Oxford, this time at Keble College, where an overwhelming majority at the AGM voted in favour of seeking institute status. The theme of the school was ‘Building Bridges’ and as the ACO News lyrically noted, ‘there, in Oxford, we built the best bridge of all – the one that links us all in enduring and fulfilling professional union. After that April… the comfortable chrysalis of the association was destined to burst forth into the radiant butterfly of the institute’. Following the official launch on 9 October 1997 in the empty shell of the St Pancras Hotel in London and in Saltaire in Yorkshire – both venues which are testimony to the importance of conservation in the modern world – Mary King, as chairman, set out three priorities for the new institute: 1. To establish professional standards for all conservation practitioners, and to improve education and training. 2. To continue the work of the ACO in providing a forum for the exchange of information and experience. 3. To promote and raise the profile of conservation. No one can be in any doubt that over the following 25 years, our secretariat and our voluntary officers have ensured that all these aims have been fully achieved. It is a measure of their commitment to the cause that over that period under the inspired leadership of Sean O’Reilly our small band of permanent staff have remained in post from the very beginning to take the institute forward to its present position as the acknowledged professional organisation for conservation practice in both the public and the private sectors. We owe an enormous debt to Fiona Newton as operations director and Lydia Porter as company secretary, together with Rob Cowan as editor of Context, Jonathan Taylor as editor of our Yearbook, Gordon Sorensen and Cathedral Communications as publisher of both, and xendo as designer of both, all for more than 20 years. A list of all the initiatives that they have overseen in order to expand our appeal would be lengthy and does not need to be set out here. But among all our volunteers who act as trustees, members of Council and on our various committees, special mention must be made of the contribution of Bob Kindred. Not only did he establish Context in its present form, but he continues to provide the research which underpins the website Toolbox and has made it such a valuable means of monitoring national trends and legal decisions which affect us all. The ACO was once dismissed as simply ‘a bunch of friends’. It was, of course, much more than that and it has now grown to be the body that supports all of us with a professional interest in promoting the historic environment.We might now have a board of trustees to ensure that we meet our corporate objectives, and we have taken full advantage of advances in technology to communicate with our members through our sophisticated website and our regular Newsblogs. Our charitable purpose is underpinned by our requirement for regular CPD updates. Above all we have helped to shape national legislation through the timely contributions of our consultations panel. It is perhaps a reflection of the changing nature of conservation that the majority of our members are now employed in the private sector rather than in public service. Our Historic Environment Service Providers Recognition scheme is an appropriate response to that shift. Most important of all, we have achieved all of this while still managing to remain a friendly and accessible organisation. I am immensely proud to be entitled to put the letters IHBC after my name, even though I am supposed to preface them with the qualification (ret). I look forward with confidence to the next 25 years. MalcolmAirs was chairman of the IHBC from 1998 to 2001, and its first president from 2001 to 2003.
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