Measuring Heritage Conservation Performance
ICCROM is an organization created by and for its Member States. For over half a century it has been our constant concern to maintain our relevance and usefulness for heritage institutions and professionals in different parts of the world. It is with this mandate in mind that I take great pleasure in presenting this publication, Measuring Heritage Conservation Performance, hoping it will reach the widest possible public. This volume is the compilation of the work presented at the 6th International Seminar on Urban Conservation organized in Recife, Brazil in March 2011.
In 2008, ICCROM’s regional programme for Latin America and the Caribbean LATAM chose the theme of Economic Indicators in Heritage Conservation as one of its areas of collaboration. It was recognized that such a tool was necessary in all fields of heritage, in small archives, national museums or historic towns. The pressure to be accountable, and the lack of language and terminology to talk about what we do in these terms is felt throughout the cultural heritage field. CECI (Centre for Advanced Studies in Integrated Conservation) took the leadership in addressing this issue within the LATAM programme.
The seminar in Recife brought to light at least three important trends. Firstly, there is a substantial amount of work underway on this theme, both in academic and heritage settings. It is encouraging to note that the call for papers for the seminar attracted 120 proposals. Secondly, even if the seminar was organized within the framework of the regional LATAM programme, the papers proposed were from all over the world—confirming that this is an issue of interest not only to the Latin America and the Caribbean, but to colleagues and institutions worldwide. Thirdly, we have come to reconsider the title of our theme. What started out as Economic Indicators, has now matured and widened into Measuring Performance in Conservation, in recognition of the fact that the economics of conservation is only one dimension of accountability and that it is not necessarily a good thing to isolate this dimension from the wider context of social processes.
Measuring and indicating are useful activities to keep track of what we are doing: are we achieving the goals we set ourselves? Equally important is communicating with decision makers and other stakeholders, expressing the essence of our actions in terms understandable to people outside of our specialized field.
The diversity of approaches and the determination to come up and test different ways of measuring performance in conservation represented in these papers are a testimony of the eagerness of the heritage professionals to engage with the society at all levels. I hope sincerely that by making this body of work available we will not only encourage debate and discussion within conservation field, but also inspire engagement and participation of new colleagues from other areas of society, with whom we are willing and eager to join forces so as to build a more sustainable future.