Celebrating the Illustrated Burra Charter

In this, my three-hundredth posting to Marking time, I want to record that The Illustrated Burra Charter: Good Practice for Heritage Places has been launched.

Writing this book has been a long project for Meredith Walker and me. I have already mentioned it here a few times - at first draft, final draft, proofing, and printing stages. This is a project that seemed like it would never end. But now it has.

Australia ICOMOS, the organisation that commissioned and published the book, laid on a launch event at its conference at Port Arthur. I’ll quote from the ICOMOS newsletter:

The book’s authors Meredith Walker and Peter Marquis-Kyle spoke about their work on the book, a lengthy labour of love! It was great to have a moment to congratulate Meredith and Peter for this huge achievement. As always, they are already looking ahead to new challenges, and the next things to do in promoting good heritage practice in Australia. The rest of us truly admire their stamina!

Meredith and Peter thanked the many dozens of friends and colleagues who assisted them in tracking down good case studies from all over the country to demonstrate the application of the Burra Charter. They also especialliy acknowledged the valuable role played by Duncan Marshall, who was the skilled project manager for the Australia ICOMOS Executive Committee during the development of the publication.

We were very fortunate to have International ICOMOS Secretary-General, Dinu Bumbaru (Montreal, Canada) attend and participate in the Loving it to Death conference, and he generously agreed to launch the Illustrated Burra Charter while in Australia. In doing so, he spoke of the immense value of illustrating good practice, and of the international recognition of the Burra Charter in the ongoing development of conservation philisophy and practice withing ICOMOS/span.