V&A Culture in Crisis and ICOM UK are pleased to announce a new webinar series, Preserving the Past: Strategies for Heritage in Crisis.

Hosted by Maria Blyzinsky (Trustee at ICOM UK) and Sam Johnson (Cultural Heritage Preservation Lead for V&A), the series will feature specialists who will discuss aspects of crisis management from their own experience. Each webinar will focus on a different threat and will provide invaluable insights and strategies for safeguarding heritage in times of peril. There will also be a chance for the audience to ask questions.

Whether you work in museums, galleries, archives, libraries or other heritage sites, the series will feature case studies and research to share some of the latest tools and techniques used to protect and preserve our shared cultural heritage for future generations.

The first webinar on Fire will take place at 1:30 BST on Friday 28 June.

Our guests will be Nina Kjølsen Jernæs (Paintings Conservator at NIKU, the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research) and Emma Coburn (Heritage Lead for Programmes, Resourcing and Risk at the Houses of Parliament) who will discuss the latest research on fire protective textiles for heritage collections and reflections on the 2020 Watts Gallery fire.

Hosts and Guests:

Maria Blyzinsky is a trustee of ICOM UK (the UK national branch of the International Council of Museums) where she is responsible for liaison with the UK national branch of Blue Shield. Maria has also been involved in a number of initiatives to support the protection of cultural heritage in Ukraine.

Sam Johnson is the Cultural Heritage Preservation Lead (maternity cover) for the V&A where she coordinates the Culture in Crisis programme of talks and events and is responsible for V&A’s crisis management plans.

Nina Kjølsen Jernæs holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts Conservation and has worked at NIKU as a paintings conservator since 2008, with an additional role as a researcher since 2016. Nina’s main areas of work are preventive conservation, condition assessments, salvage, damage limitations and interdisciplinary projects related to climate change and extreme events on cultural heritage.

Emma Coburn is an Accredited Member of the Institute of Conservation (ICON: ACR), specialising in Conservation Management. She has nearly twenty years’ experience working in the field of preventive conservation, collections care and risk management of museum collections. Since 2022, she has held the position of Heritage Lead for Programmes, Resourcing and Risk at the Houses of Parliament. Emma was Collections Manager at Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village from 2019 to 2022.

Click 'Find out more' to register your place.

There will be further webinar sessions to be announce at a later date.