John Preston looks back at the 1989 ACO conference and looks forward to finding another chance to visit Durham. COMMUNICATING CONSERVATION Great place, shame about the weather! Keith Murray, Ian Ayris and the rest of the team set the tone for the conference with both their stylish nautical rig and the liquid welcome, and the sky was the only grey aspect. The Thursday sessions on the media provided a short course which would have been worth the conference fee on its own. The radio and television professionals Graeme Aldous and Roger Burgess gave great insights into their respective media, and object lessons in effective communication. Stephen Williams highlighted the challenge of presenting a complex conservation message briefly and simply: how to get the meat into a single eyecatching sentence? The new broadsheet emphasis on picture quality offers opportunities for well-planned, striking images: think ahead, and try picture desks as well as news and features. The practical experience in the workshops was invaluable: to find, as I did, at 40 minutes' notice that I had to prepare and present a 30 second piece to camera concentrated the mind wonderfully. One small criticism here: although there was only time for a few of us to work to camera, the training value for everyone could have been even greater if we had all been asked to prepare pieces, with a selection made at the last minute, King's College Carol Service style! The main message from the day was that there is no substitute for establishing contacts in the media, in order to set up informed lines of communication available both for educational features and to deal with any issue as it arises. Discussion revealed a wide gulf in the audience between those ACO members who have easy access to the media and those whose access is restricted or prevented by their employers. The BBC cameras filming our workshop efforts provided a vivid illustration of what can be achieved by an individual conservation officer CONTEXT23 making effective use of the medium. The Townscape series for which the BBC was filming had originally been suggested by David Lovie, who remains consultant to the programme; some of us were able to visit the studios to see the programme being edited, and we all had the chance to watch the broadcast the following day. It was a great bonus for ACO to have its conference featured on regional television, but revealing to see how much filming is done for a very brief programme excerpt. Let's hope that Townscape soon gets the national networking it deserves. Dayschool on Communication The Friday Dayschool on Communication started with Gordon Michell's work in Wirksworth and Caine; he showed how effective use of schools and their projects can be in involving the local community. For me, the most interesting news was of a teaching •seminar for builders, specifiers and architects on traditional repair methods which he organised for local builders, in conjunction with English Heritage. Development of this formula would help to answer a crying need. Stuart Smith's presentation on Ironbridge showed the scope and vision which has made the museum such a success, but left nagging doubts about the source of some of the buildings being re-erected. Andrew Brown then astounded everyone present with details of Chester City Council's annual financial commitment to conservation: £196,500 for historic building grants £140,000 for improvement grants £ 75,000 for City owned buildings £ 35,000 for City walls £ 27,500 for compulsory purchases (compare Durham City's £4000 allocation). I must have been in a state of shock after hearing these utopian figures, because little seems to have registered for the next few hours, apart from David Lovie's virtuoso performance - a must for the first conservation pantomime! Jonathan Griffin neatly exposed some of the wilder fantasies about the income to be earned from heritage tourism, pointing out that the Woburns of this world amortised their capital at the Reformation. The highlight of the day was provided by Ken Martin, in both 1980s and 1960s forms; the latter on screen with a graphic demonstration of the effects of redevelopment, using coffee cups as offices with pots for tower blocks, and ending with a vast sweeping demolition. Vivid proof that you don't have to have expensive visual aids to make a point; it's imagination that counts. The heritage industry The "heritage industry" session raised arguments about the balance between genuine history and the synthetic. Peter Lewis countered Hewison's criticisms of the escapist view of history by emphasising that nostalgia involves pain as well as pleasure, and that heritage interpretation need not present a partial view only. I had visited Jorvik on the way to Durham; to my surprise, I had been impressed by the experience of the sights, sounds and smells of the "Viking village street", but the influence of commercial pressures was all too obvious in the use of the fearsome image of Eric Bloodaxe to attract people to see this peaceful scene. Jorvik is an obviously packaged experience; Beamish, by contrast, is large enough for the visitor to enjoy without feeling pressured. The reconstructions of both buildings and contents were convincing, although the sensation of the past growing before one's very eyes is strange to say the least! I felt that the Beamish experience gains conviction from its basis as a record of the northern way of life, made first and foremost by and for the people of the north. Great excitement to see the replica Locomotion in steam, even more when we saw the boatered 17
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