Cultural Context Conference

Friday 15 June 2007
Annie Wyatt Room, National Trust Centre, Observatory Hill

 

Download a booking form.

Download the Programmee (subject to change)

This conference looks at the role of culture in our understanding of the historic environment and sense of place. The National Trust Heritage Festival 2007 was Context: Natural and Cultural Landscapes. It was chosen because of the importance of the surrounding environment, both physical and cultural, to nearly all conservation battles and debates in recent years. On one level it is simply how much of the ‘surroundings’ that need to be protected beyond the immediate curtilage; the concept of view corridors where development may need to be controlled and ‘buffer zones’ comes into this category. The 2004 Trust conference heritage under glass dealt with this issue.

 

On another level it is the collection of all things that make a place ‘feel’ a particular way. Those things can include a predominant culture expressed perhaps through architecture, food and language, a sense of openness or perhaps cosiness. It could be the presence of sea air if not a view. It could be a scale of development, a predominant garden or plant type, a legislative climate or a political agenda. Perhaps we should be remembering George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four Party slogan: ‘who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past’ and asking ourselves what is the ‘present’ saying about our past.

 

Venue
The conference will be held in the Annie Wyatt Room at the National Trust Centre, which is located at the end of Watson Road, Observatory Hill, Sydney. The main office building was originally the 1815 Military Hospital, a model school in the 1840s and fi nally part of Fort Street Girls High School before becoming the National Trust Centre. The room is named after the ‘founder’ of the National Trust in 1945, Annie Wyatt.
There is parking available on the site.

Bookings and Registration

Bookings and Credit card payments can be made by calling Mara Barnes on +61 2 92580161
$180 for non- members and $155 for members. Student Discount available on request.
or e-mailing to conference@nsw.nationaltrust.org.au
fax to +61 2 02580164

or mail to
Conservation Department
National Trust of Australia (NSW)
GPO Box 518
Sydney, NSW, 2001
Cheques should be made out to The National Trust of Australia (NSW)

 

Speakers

Geoff Ashley is a Senior Associate with Godden Mackay Logan Heritage Consultants and has over twenty five years experience in heritage assessment and policy
development in both public and private sectors. His particular interests are cultural landscapes, vernacular architecture and interpretation. Geoff is a current member
of the Architectural Advisory Committee of the National Trust of Australia (NSW).

Kirrily Jordan is a PhD candidate at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her research is exploring the relationship between ethnicity, space, the built environment
and social relations.

 

Simon McArthur has an international reputation in nature tourism and ecotourism, and is now also developing best practice expertise in cultural heritage tourism. He has extensive industry experience in planning and delivering tourism developments in highly sensitive, high profile areas throughout the world, including Central and South America, China and the Pacifi c Islands. He is renowned for strategically bridging the gap between heritage management, visitor management and tourism activity; spanning marketing and business analysis to creative product development; and practicing what he preaches.

 

Bruce Pennay is a member of the Bonegilla Migrant Experience Steering Committee that is commemorating the 60th anniversary of the opening of Bonegilla in
December. He is preparing interpretative materials for that commemoration and has prepared a nomination of the Block 19, Bonegilla site to the new National Heritage List. As a heritage and historian consultant, he has explored and written about the history and heritage of Indigo, Greater Hume and Murray shires, and about Deniliquin, Goulburn, Wollongong, Bathurst, Broken Hill, Albury and Wodonga. He is an honorary Adjunct Associate Professor of Charles Sturt University. In 2001 he published Albury-Wodonga’s Bonegilla: A provincial centre’s experience of postwar immigration, 1947-71, Albury Regional Museum.

 

Aletha Penrith is a Wiraduri woman, based in the Redfern/ Waterloo area. A mother of three, she is currently a director on the board of Mudgin-gal Aboriginal Women’s Centre, a drop in and referral centre for Aboriginal women in need of basic services. Aletha is passionate about Redfern/ Waterloo, being the most prominent Aboriginal Community in Sydney and home to her during her teenage and later years. This year Aletha was unanimously elected as Youth representative for the New South Wales Reconciliation Council and has represented youth views both at a domestic and international level.

 

Peter Romey is a Senior Associate with Sydney heritage consulting firm Godden Mackay Logan. From 1999 to 2006, he was the Director, Conservation and Infrastructure, at the Port Arthur Historic Site in Tasmania, responsible for the application of best practice conservation methodology in conserving a cultural site of international significance. Peter’s responsibilities included the development of strategies and budgets for the conservation of the historic site, implementing key archaeology, interpretation, fabric conservation and cultural landscape programs, maintaining tourist infrastructure and managing a large team of conservation professionals.

 

Joanna Savill Journalist, TV presenter, former international current affairs reporter and linguist, Joanna Savill describes herself as a ‘food traveller’ with a particular fascination with ‘world food’. As co-creator/presenter of the acclaimed TV series, The Food Lovers Guide to Australia, Joanna has become an authority on Australia’s cultural, and culinary, diversity. She is also an ambassador for ‘real food’ highlighting the work of chefs and home cooks, growers and producers across the country. She is a regular contributor to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Good Living section and is halfway to completing a Masters in Gastronomy from Adelaide University.

 

Ian Stapleton is a Sydney Architect. He is a Director of Clive Lucas, Stapleton & Partners a firm which has received numerous awards for its conservation work. Ian has
recently been the Heritage Architect for the conservation and adaptive reuse of the Sydney GPO and the Woolloomooloo Finger Wharf. His publications include Colour
Schemes for Old Australian Houses (with Ian Evans and Clive Lucas, 1984), More Colour Schemes for Old Australian Houses (with Ian Evans and Clive Lucas, 1992) and How to Restore the Old Aussie House, (1991). He is a past President of ICOMOS Australia

 

Anna Williams is a recent addition to the Mawland Quarantine Station team as Development Assisstant. She is a recent graduate of the University of Sydney and
holds a Bachelor of Arts (Heritage Studies) and Master of Arts- Museum Studies. She has worked as a consultant for National Parks and Wildlife Service in exhibition
development, collection management, cultural heritage education and interpretative tours and the Historic Houses Trust. She recently collaborated with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Powerhouse Museum and Migration Heritage Centre to compile Fields of Memories: The Scheyville Training Farm and Migrant Accommodation Centre 1911-1964.