Conferences and events

Following the arrival of PPS5 late in March this year, Stephen Bond was invited to speak at the Historic Towns Forum conference on 'The Future of Heritage Protection' held at Bircham Dyson Bell's offices in London on 17th June. The conference explored the implications of PPS5, including how it will change the way in which planning applications affecting the historic environment are determined and how it can be used to best effect. Speaker's presentations can be viewed at www.historictownsforum.org/london_presentations.

Prior to that, since the start of the year, he had spoken to other audiences on topics as diverse as condition surveys of major/complex heritage assets, carrying out assessments of heritage value and significance, and World Heritage. During February, he developed and ran a programme of capacity building training for managers of the Dutch Fort at Galle and other World Heritage Sites in Sri Lanka on behalf of UNESCO's World Heritage Centre.

On 21st September 2010, Stephen will be one of five international speakers taking part in a live IIC roundtable discussion in Istanbul debating the topic 'Between home and history: managing the interface between the preservation of "living" historic places and their modern development'. The other contributors will be David Lowenthal (the renowned historian and author of ‘The Past is a Foreign Country’), Prof. Leyla Neyzi (an academic oral historian and faculty member at Sabanci University, Istanbul), Prof Dr Ayfer Bartu Candan (an anthropologist at Bogazici University, Istanbul), and Dr. Francesco Siravo (from the Aga Khan Foundation). This event will be part of the International Institute's 2010 Congress, which is being held in Istanbul from the 20th to the 24th of September. The Congress itself will focus on the conservation of moveable and immovable heritage from the Eastern Mediterranean, which includes material held in collections around the world, the care and conservation of works of art, artefacts and sites, and the preservation of architecture, all reflecting the influences that have made this region one of the world's richest centres of heritage.