Celebrating in style
The Association for Heritage Interpretation decamped for our annual conference in Cardiff this year. As mentioned in a previous post, this is a big year for the association, which has been joyously celebrating its 50th birthday. It was wonderful to be part of this event, reflecting on five decades of the organisation and looking forward – with enthusiasm and some trepidation – to many more years in a leading role for the sector.
Over the three days in the city, we heard many inspiring speakers and learned more about exemplar projects; were armed with tool kits for applying best practice and had plenty of opportunities for networking and catching up. Our site visit day was spent at St Fagan’s, the National Museum of History, renowned for its collection of historic buildings in a beautifully autumn-hued landscape. It was also in the news just as we were arriving for the sad news of a break-in and robbery. While we enjoyed our visit and the team were wonderfully enthusiastic, there was most certainly a pall over the experience.
By contrast, the wonderful heritage interpretation family of old and new friends and colleagues took full advantage of being together in a celebratory mood – and we danced the first night away in the basement disco at our hotel! The second night was equally joyous as we held the AHI Engaging People Awards dinner, heard more about the shortlisted projects in the different categories, and met and cheered the winners.
It was a poignant moment for me as the final winner collected their award and returned to their seat. I have been involved in the AHI Awards scheme for twenty years, and have been training and organising the cohorts of site judges for ten of those years. I am very proud to have been at the heart of the mentoring scheme that pairs experienced heritage interpreters with those early in their career, so that the judges benefit from the process as well as the shortlisted and winning project teams.
It has been an honour to be involved, and I am happily handing over my site-judges-training hat to a brilliant new awards team. But I can’t help thinking that I won’t be able to cut the ties completely! Watch this space…
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