C O N T E X T 1 7 4 : D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 2 45 NewsBlog service is the NewsBlog archive, an open-access, searchable resource. As we built that aspect in from the very start, we have also created another research tool for the sector and for us – complementing the Context archive – with a potential well demonstrated by the details in this paper. 10. HESPR (Historic Environment Service Provider Recognition) was launched in 2008, tentatively titled as a ‘promotional service for conservation practices’. It was operating from the start first as a quality-assurance programme for commercial operations, with our trading arm IHBC Enterprises as its opening sign-up. Today the vastly upgraded service boasts more than 50 members, from sole traders to conglomerates, and its signposting from Historic England’s web pages is the kind of special support all HESPR members value. 11. Our LPA Resources website ‘Why planning authorities must have conservation skills!’ of 2011 gathered together a diverse range of research and advocacy produced around the heritage protection reform programme noted above. It is very much a ‘historic’ resource now, as we would not approach a web resource like that today, but it still has a great deal of useful source material.We plan to recast it in a new and more useable format in due course. 12. Our circulation of advertisements for job and career opportunities had a long history even from before 1997, but the evolution of our fully branded Jobs etc service took place only from 2010. It has had too many serviceled upgrades since to mention here. Suffice to say that the new arrangements brought in from about 2015 have made it the critical income-generator ensuring our low membership fees today. 13. Keeping up with members’ rapidly changing work patterns, we launched our ‘mobile first’ website in 2014. Although that was really just a point on a long tradition of upgrades still managed by our IT lead Peter Badcock, it marked an important cultural transition in our approach to digital platforms, underpinning our successful response to the pandemic, of which more later. 14. Our Conservation Course Connection Days, from 2013, marked a step change in engagement with early career practitioners, one building on… 15. …the AGM adoption of Associate membership that same year, as a stepping-stone to Full membership, and was… 16. …followed by the 2014 IHBC’s Branch Connection Day themed on Associate membership and more, itself also a new type of event that… 17. …as a ‘Branch Connection Day’, offered a day to better ‘connect our branches’. This opened as a programme of informal days hosted by the national office annually in Birmingham. They supported branch interactions and capacity building, while also helping us explore strategic national issues, such as our Code of Conduct. All of these… 18. …evolved into the much more personal – and, for volunteers, usefully less time-consuming – branch interface currently being offered though our newly recruited support officer, JudeWheeler. 19. Returning to the roughly chronological listing after that rush through some interconnected highlights, our digital directions also appeared in our first online Events Calendar posting, from 2013. In true IHBC mode, that also included and includes a searchable archive to inform training plans and priorities. 20. Since then the calendar service has evolved symbiotically alongside – and has coincided with – the IHBC’s own Recognised CPD Provider service, which evolved as a CPD resource listing from 2013. That originated in the wellmeaning, if largely uncontrolled, listing of websites of ‘sector friends’: the familiar and easily built web links page that may well have been one of the first web pages offered.With formal and structured recognition for CPD providers on offer from 2017, we refined the process, with a suitably light touch befitting a free service. More recently (2021) we established a feedback form for users as a lighttouch layer of service review. I have realised that I must stop here as I have run out not only of space but also of any chance of selecting just 25 for 25. I have still not mentioned courses, comms, Council+, current constitution, chartering, CPD – and those are only some of the ‘c’s. I have barely touched on the branches, schools, panels, working groups as human highlights, or the ToolBox, Research and Guidance Notes, databases, standards and guidance and partnership working as critical practice base-lines, or even advocacy and the new All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG). I have also dropped my planned conclusion to the list: a repeat (somewhat indiscreet perhaps) of No 1 above, to reinforce the point about the value of IHBC membership today. Yet all that cutting back still has not made a dent in reaching ‘25 for 25’. Clearly this personal listing will need some more thought before my next column in this anniversary year. Meanwhile, why not let me know your own personal take on 25 for #IHBC25 – the IHBC’s best, most representative, fondest or whatever you think. That way I may be able to fill some more of the gaps in this sadly imperfect listing.We might also do a poll – Twitter, LinkedIn or otherwise – and see what might be the top 25 for IHBC25 for all our members and networks. That would be both a fun and useful outcome for the year. Seán O’Reilly, director@ihbc.org.uk
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgyMjA=