Relinquishing ambulance chasing: Designing a future for a conservation profession fully engaged with Australia's cultural heritage

Abstract

This paper seeks to reframe the ways in which the future of the conservation profession is perceived. Maintaining that it is issues of access and preservation as established in the 1975 Pigott Report that remain primary concerns for conservation, the paper explores the kinds of evidence-based research useful in determining potential conservation futures. Using the 1995 National Conservation and Preservation Policy for Movable Cultural Heritage as a point of reference, and rejecting the centralized model of institutional dependence as no longer being essential to the growth of the conservation profession, an articulated series of sector-focused Green Papers is proposed as a way of reconfiguring key questions about conservation, and in order to provide metrics relating to location, responsibility, significance, risk and efficacy. The findings can then be compiled as content for a broader White Paper that engages with a critical response to risks to the survival of Australia's cultural material.