National Endangered Skills and Trades seminar

MICHELLE NEWTON-EDWARDS: Welcome everyone to the National Museum of Australia and thank you for attending this evening on what is a very cool evening. So, thank you for braving it and coming along.

I’m Michelle Newton-Edwards from the National Museum of Australia’s conservation section and I have the great privilege of working on the Museum’s wonderfully diverse textile collection.

I would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal, the Nungawal and the Ngambri people who are the traditional custodians of this land on which we are meeting, and pay respect to their elders both past and present.

I extend this respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in attendance today. So, today’s seminar is part of the National Endangered Skills and Trade show now on at the Fitters Workshop in Kingston which I attended this afternoon.

I would really strongly encourage you, if you didn’t get a chance to go along today, to attend tomorrow any time between nine and four. You might like to get there early to just beat the crowds to the Bus Depot Markets. But I assure you, you will have a wonderful and fascinating time. So please try to get along.

So, collection custodians and visitors alike, appreciate the tangible value of objects. Just as importantly though, is valuing the intangible knowledge and skills that are acquired for the preservation and maintenance of collections for future generations.

Tonight we will hear from eight very passionate speakers from diverse professions who will discuss their particular endangered skills and trades.

I’d like to welcome Victoria Pearce, who is the Director of Endangered Heritage, to the lecture.

VICTORIA PEARCE: Thanks Michelle and I’d like to thank the National Museum for hosting this because it’s something that they started actually with an exhibition called Rare Trades in 2003. Some of the staff that worked with me at Endangered Heritage Works, worked on that exhibition.

So it’s really nice to be back at the Museum and to be coming full circle and bringing this theme back here. I’d like to thank you all for braving the most horribly cold, miserable night to come out to listen to us. As Michelle said, it’s something we’re very passionate about.

I’m a fine art conservator and I work at Endangered Heritage with a fine team of incredibly qualified and capable conservators. One of the things that is happening more and more is while we conserve objects and material evidence of our culture and the culture of others, is we’re finding it very difficult to tie in with other skilled professionals whose skills we can lean on. We may be able to work on the clock face, but we’re not horologists. We need horologists to help us out.

What’s happening in our profession, is we’re being called on to do more and more work that’s not in our training, that’s actually sword conservation, or very specialised work like horology. There’s no — well, I’m not going to pretend that I have the skills to do that, and we need these professionals.

So, without further ado, I’d like to introduce to the stage Danny Dawson, from the National Film and Sound Archive, who’s going to be talking about analogue sound preservation. Thank you Danny.

DANNY DAWSON: Yes, I think somewhere along the way the topic got changed on me, so bear with me. What a great crowd and thank you Victoria for the kind introduction. I’ve just been listening to some of the people that are going to be talking tonight and they’re amazingly talented people and it’s a privilege to be speaking at what is a very important forum.

The topic of endangered skills and heritage is an important one for us all to engage in. It is of significance to the organisation I work for — the National Film and Sound Archive — and the galleries, libraries, archives and museum sector, or the GLAM sector, as we call it generally.

Preserving and making our cultural heritage accessible is the very reason for our existence. I hope that by sharing some of the NFSA’s experience, it will help in your discourse within your communities. We need events such as this so that we can expose future generations to the context of the past to understand the future.

We’re all here tonight for different reasons and I’m hoping that tonight’s discussion will inspire you to have an active role in maintaining our heritage, whatever that role turns out to be.

I joined the NFSA in 2006 as a film curator having previously worked in the film and distribution industry. This was back when movies were still shot and screened on film, the modern processes of which today are virtually completely digital.

I’ve had roles managing preservation where we’ve transitioned our people and processes from analogue preservation to digital preservation. Now I’m managing our ICT and engineering team, where we’re working across the organisation with colleagues to implement a truly digital archive.

One thing I’ve learnt, is that change is inevitable and it is constant, as I’m sure you all know. However, we cannot dismiss the past in our endeavour to secure the future.

The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s living archive. We are the custodians of over 2.8 million audio visual items that we not only collect, but we preserve for future generations, and we share it in many diverse ways.

Our collection is made up of both traditional analogue formats — such as film from the movie industry, magnetic tape from television, radio and recorded sound — as well as documents and artefacts. But it doesn’t end there. We also acquire contemporary and ever-emerging digital formats and we migrate these to formats that are safer formats. This all represents the breadth of Australia’s screen and sound cultural identity dating from the early 1890s.

Our remit is large and it is a challenging one, having to preserve the past but also to be ahead of the future. This means we need to uphold and maintain knowledge, skills and equipment.

Audio visual heritage comprises a large and increasingly important part of the world’s cultural heritage. A major challenge of AV archives is to migrate analogue works that are at risk but we also need to keep up with the newborn digital productions too. It’s critical for us to invest in and maintain the relevant skill base for both.

We need the right equipment, the right standards and we need to continually migrate our collection to digital formats so that we can keep it safe and ultimately make it accessible. In an organisation that depends on traditional skills and knowledge, we are also having to become digital by design.

In August 2017, the NFSA published a paper titled, ‘Deadline 2025’. This paper summarises what the global AV archiving community agrees is a milestone date, whereby the year 2025 collections originating on magnetic tape will be virtually impossible to duplicate.

The NFSA has over 45,000 hours on video, and over 30,000 hours on audio formats that need to be copied by then. Magnetic tape is on light film where you can shine a light through it and still see what is on it. It requires format-specific equipment to play back the content, which means we need the right equipment, as well as matching spare parts which are increasingly becoming rare as they don’t manufacture these players anymore.

Further to this, there are a wide array of skills and expertise required to preserve just one item. Expert curators assess significance and interpret the collection item. We employ people to maintain our collection in the best conditions for long-term storage. There are skilled AV conservators who prepare an item for duplication. Then expert operators play-back using format-specific equipment. Before it’s then quality-checked and ingested into our collection on a safer digital format.

Importantly, we also need to maintain skilled engineers to fix and maintain equipment that is largely obsolete. We also have to have staff to look after the digital infrastructure. It’s a mean feat that requires protecting skills and knowledge of yesteryear and we need to do it en masse.

Meanwhile time keeps ticking and before you know it, it will be the year 2025. There is a risk we will not preserve it all, especially if the rare equipment isn’t maintained, if skilled operators aren’t available and we don’t speed up our output.

The ‘Deadline 2025’ paper is explicit that we need more funding to have a chance of saving most of this part of our collection. As time is ticking on our ability to preserve our collections, we are now experiencing a generational change as well. Skilled people retire. They come and they go.

In the past we could source skilled professionals from the production industries. However, now that those industries have fully implemented digital systems across their businesses, we no longer have this an option.

It is therefore imperative that the NFSA maintains internal knowledge and training across all of its disciplines. As Australia’s only national audio visual archive, the NFSA is uniquely placed to be a leader in the GLAM sector in the collection, preservation, curation and sharing of audio visual content in all formats.

As our resources are increasingly stretched, we also need to ensure that we are taking a collaborative approach, partnering with other institutions in the sector, creators and industry. We must ensure that we use our expertise to speak with authority and to offer guidance and support in relation to audio visual archiving to the sector. It is in this context that we are committed to the creation of a national centre of AV excellence to ensure there is an advocate for the distributed national audio visual collections.

To give an example of how we have collaborated to ensure skills are available, we have had active relationships in the past with the University of Melbourne where we have taught a short course of AV conservation to students training as conservators.

We’ve also had a very strong partnership with Charles Sturt University, providing resources to their graduate certificate in audio visual archiving and have done so for many years. But is there scope for the education sector to partner with institutions like the NFSA to have vocational and tertiary skills taught on the job whilst helping to preserve our collection?

Further to that, how can we ensure people get practical experience, preserving AV collections that can be ready to take the lead on AV preservation in many organisations that just don’t know where to start?

The Indiana University in the United States has a very interesting example that we could potentially learn from. They have their students actively work on preserving their very own collection. There is healthy percentage of those students who continue working with them after their studies.

Many of the students take their newly learned skills and seek employment in archives around the USA. A model like this is worth having a discussion about to see if we can implement similar opportunities that benefit the output of our cultural sector and help maintain our AV heritage across the nation.

Whilst we’re still working in an analogue world, we’re having to be digital by design to remain relevant. This means we are fundamentally rethinking how we do things at the archive.

While it is impossible not to engage in largely analogue procedures in order to get digital outcomes, once we have our digital derivatives, there are new opportunities that will shape the way we work and how we interpret our cultural heritage. Digital content allows us to share our collection on a global stage.

Our website is filled with amazing curated exhibitions that culminate from the hard work of dedicated curators and researchers, usually over many hours and years watching and listening to content to understand it. As we increase the size of our digital collection, so do the options. We have to use technology to increase our understanding of it. For example, automated transcriptions through speech detects an image recognition becomes increasingly available.

This opens possibilities beyond traditional research of our collections and has the potential to change workflow practices, the models of access we offer using Medidata in unique ways. Perhaps we could provide our data in an open way and let users decide how our collection is important to them.

The Library of Congress in the US is now using crowd-sourcing technology to enrich its catalogue information by getting citizens to manually transcribe its Abraham Lincoln collection of handwritten letters, using a platform they have built.

It is an exciting time of change, but potentially at the expense of traditional skills and workflows. This will resonate with many in the room and is a real conversation that takes place each and every day as technology changes.

The one constant though is change, and we are forced to redefine the problem and find new opportunities. In this context, and as a national institution, we are committed to curatorial values and will continue to find ways of offering the original experience.

Our art cinema is equipped to play back film and we regularly hold a vinyl lounge so that punters can be immersed in the original intent of the vinyl they’re experiencing and they’re just a couple of examples.

What I’ve outlined is the tip of the iceberg in considerations and challenges we have. But generally, both analogue formats and work practices have a place at the NFSA alongside those that are digital.

Digital doesn’t simply replace analogue. They both must be maintained in parallel for us to be successful at collecting, preserving and sharing our collection. But we cannot do it alone and we need to continue to collaborate, to educate and maintain skills and equipment to ensure our collections are sustainable for future generations to enjoy.

If we don’t, the cost of inaction is too high. Imagine a world where we couldn’t access our cultural identity through our audio visual archive. It is a real prospect if we don’t act to preserve endangered skills and heritage. We will also miss the opportunities the digital world presents.

Similarly, I actively encourage you to engage in your communities to ensure traditional skills and knowledge are not lost, and to identify what will help you maintain your relevance in an ever-changing world. Take a stand and maintain your purpose. You are your strongest advocate.

If you’re a decision-maker, you can have a real and positive impact on our cultural heritage by engaging and understanding the nuances of each traditional sector. And if you’re wondering if you’d like to work in the cultural heritage sector, I strongly encourage you to consider it. It is a profession with purpose and we need passionate people.

In closing, and in what is NAIDOC week, I’d like the collection to speak for itself by playing a special audio clip. In February 2017, we celebrated the inscription of the 1899 and 1903 Fanny Cochrane Smith Tasmanian Aboriginal recordings into the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register. These are the only sound recordings of Fanny Cochrane Smith, the last known fluent speaker of any one of the original Tasmanian Aboriginal languages. Her words and songs provide a unique insight into Tasmanian Aboriginal society, culture and spiritual life.

The Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery is the custodian of the recordings, and the NFSA has provided specialist preservation and curatorial services. This is a truly remarkable example of why our cultural heritage matters.

VIDEO: These recordings were made with Tasmanian Aboriginal woman Fanny Cochrane Smith in 1899. Aboriginal people may find these recordings distressing, therefore any auditions for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, should be held in consultation with the senior people of those communities.

DANNY DAWSON: She’s beautiful. Thank you very much everyone and enjoy the rest of the evening. Enjoy the show tomorrow as well. It’s excellent. Thank you.

MICHELLE NEWTON-EDWARDS: I’d just like to introduce Robin Tate. She runs Tate Bindery. She’s an extraordinary paper conservator and a very extraordinary book conservator. So, she’s talking about her experiences as a bookbinder.

ROBIN TAIT: Thank you very much. And thank you, Danny, for that very informative and thought-provoking talk which I hope mine will be up to scratch for.

So, tonight, I wanted to talk about my journey to become a book conservator. As you can see from the slide, it’s been quite a varied journey. My one comment is that this journey’s been one of, shall we say, a lifelong vocation to become trained as a book conservator.

I started at the University of Canberra when it was actually called CCAE, or Canberra College of Advanced Education, and eventually did my degree in paper conservation. I then went on to the Campbell School of Art and Craft in London and did hand bookbinding and book restoration, as it was called then.

It was a one-year course and during that time we did hand training in the English tradition of bookbinding. It started with very simple things like pamphlet bindings, and we moved right through in the one-year course at a fairly brisk pace, I may add, to doing fine hand binding.

So, it was a bit of sort of, get your work done now and hurry up because we’ve actually got to move on to something else. I then, when I came back to Australia, was employed at the Australian War Memorial and, at the same time, I set up the Tate Bindery.

From that time on, I have been working and training and learning all about the different book structures and book conversation problems that are actually presented to practitioners in my area on a regular basis.

I also was very fortunate in 1984 to gain a Rotary Foundation scholarship and I was able to train with James Sprockman in Oxford. James is a master bookbinder who was trained in the Cockerill tradition. For those of you who know that, that will mean that he has trained in the school of TJ Coptensadersen who was the bookbinder for the Kelmscott Press which was William Morris’s press in the 19th century.

I also have done a certificate at the University of Melbourne in art authentication and that has actually been quite useful in my paper conservation, looking at authenticating art works. And even just deciding whether or not something is actually what it’s purported to be.

So, what do you need for hand bookbinding besides the traditional skills? This is an example of the sort of things that you need to be able to understand. The technique that this has been bound with is sewn-on cord and leather binding. It has marble paper sides, and the lacing through the top is actually a vellum strip which has then been inserted through the spine and either side of the actual spine.

To arrive at that, you actually need to be able to know how to put together the leaves, or the pages, of the actual book that you have. You have to be able to know how its structure’s going to work with the paper you’ve chosen for it.

If you’re then going to put on decorative elements of that, you need to know that you’re looking at doing a headband of some description for each treatment, for example, or edge gildings, things like that. Then finally your gold tooling, which all forms part of the hand bookbinding tradition.

It also means that when you’re looking at the books that clients bring to you for repair, it means that you can identify whether or not it’s a case binding or a laced-on boards binding, such as this one. Or you’re looking at some other traditional structure, made possibly before these particular bindings came about. Such as the early Coptic manuscript techniques or the German long-stitch non-adhesive techniques. So, it’s not just learning how to do binding in one particular tradition, it’s also looking at the traditions of other cultures as well.

And paper conservation. It’s an area where you need to be able to look at the entire object, know how it’s been created, before you even start tackling the problems that are presented here. Before you all sort of gasp, this actually spent its time in a shed with the rats [indicates slide]. So, you can understand we have some quite interesting things come past our eyes in private conservation practice.

At first glance, this is a painted portrait. You’d be well and truly forgiven for thinking it’s just simply that. However, this is actually a salted paper print which is a very early form of photography. Over that the artist has actually done the drawing and painting of this sitter and basically fleshed-in the portrait.

This was taken from a smaller portrait. It was probably an amber-type that existed in the parish. The sitter is actually the Reverend Brown, who was the Arch-Deacon at the Lawn Cistern Church. He was the very first one who was appointed.

The portrait was done round about 1860. That, by its very date, gives us quite a good idea of what techniques were available at that time. Therefore it also gives you the clues to what you’re looking at with the actual structure and manufacture of the artefact.

This artefact was also — it’s on a paper-support, as you can see around the frontal lobotomy. It’s also lined onto a cotton cloth which was then put onto a strainer and framed up. So it was quite a complex object in itself.

As you can see, the after-photos show that it was quite a successful treatment, to the point where we ended up — this was completely taken off the original stretcher, washed, lined. And the repair was a complete new piece of paper actually put onto the new strainer cloth. Then it was in-painted to match it.

This is a Bible which was split in half. Fortunately I was able to identify that it had been sewn on tapes, and therefore I was able to insert new tapes underneath the original tapes, therefore not disrupting the original sewing.

Here you can see the end of the spine and you can see the slightly, shall we say, the reverse engineering techniques that are used for putting back the tail of the headband and the headcap of this particular book. It was very satisfying working on this particular thing, but you can also see that it had its hairy moments, as well particularly trying to maintain the gold tooling across on the title.

So, if you want to become a book conservator, as you can see, there’s a really large number of avenues that you actually have to pursue to do that. It means that you need the traditional hand skills of a bookbinder to be able to understand what you’re looking at. You need the paper conservation skills to be able to repair the texts and, mostly for my work, particularly when I’m dealing with holy Bibles and family documents, the paper conservation skills that are required for that, are actually highly important.

Family documents and the family registers and Bibles seem to be afflicted with insects, sticky tape, masking tape and all sorts of interesting adhesives to hold them together. My skills as a paper conservator come to the fore when trying to preserve that particular aspect of the family history.

The other thing that you will need if you’re going to become a book conservator is financial support. I have to say that, other than my training in Australia, which was very fortunately at Australian University when we had our fees paid for, which was just wonderful. The training I’ve done overseas has all been either self-funded or as a result of a scholarship or a fellowship.

Finally, we need the qualified and professional teachers, and also the courses offered in a science-base, rather than in an arts-base, for conservation.

Conservation isn’t about putting together, or painting, pretty pictures onto restoring art works and things like that. It’s about actually understanding the materials that you’re dealing with, and putting a treatment in place that will not further deteriorate the actual item that you’re dealing with so that people are able to enjoy it for years to come.

Finally, we need the recognition and the support of the professional bodies, ours in particular, which is the Australian Institute of Conservational Cultural material. And with that, I’d like to say thank you very much.

VICTORIA PEARCE: So, I’d like to invite Natalie to come and talk to us. Natalie Delaney-John is the director of Rest in Pieces and a taxidermist and you’ll be able to come and see both Robin and Natalie and Aaron, who’ll be speaking next, at the Fitters Workshop.

NATALIE DELANEY-JOHN: Hello.

VICTORIA PEARCE: Do you want to take those, and I’ll come back when you need them?

NATALIE DELANEY-JOHN: Thank you. I had a battle with a bunk bed and I lost. I got like a two for my dismount. I have like OCD, we can’t have that white hand on my logo, it’s really upsetting me. Thank you.

So, thank you for coming out tonight. It’s really cold. I’m from Melbourne, so it is really freezing. So I appreciate you being here. Tonight I’m going to talk to you about breathing life into the dying arts and, as Victoria said, I am a taxidermist.

When I tell people that I am a taxidermist, they usually think that I do tax or I am a taxi driver. But taxidermy is in fact the art of preparing, stuffing and mounting the skins of animals with lifelike effect. Look, I can’t have you all falling asleep.

So, it was a real challenge for me to get into the industry in Australia. I moved down from Brisbane to Melbourne and I moved down with a corporate job. I really wanted to find a creative outlet. The main issue with that is that I’m talentless. I can’t draw or dance or sing. So there were very few avenues for me to pursue.

And having moved to Melbourne, there are amazing curiosity shops down there. I started to buy a few skulls and pieces from the natural world, and I really found it to be very beautiful.

Having taken a few of those things home, it was then that I realised that other people perhaps don’t have the same enthusiasm for it and found it a little odd. It sparked a curiosity in me to see if I could go and learn how to do taxidermy in Australia.

What I found out through my research, is that taxidermy hadn’t actually been taught since the 1970s. It was actually taken off the syllabus at tafe and universities because essentially people were unemployable.

It’s really fascinating because if you are to go to museums in places like the United States or the United Kingdom, they have these incredible diorama halls that really work to capture the natural world and we don’t seem to really have that in Australia, and our taxidermy collections are incredibly dire. I find that interesting because we are one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet. And we have some of the most unique flora and fauna.

So the very little amount of work that gets done, tends to be outsourced to private taxidermists who have learnt their skills and their trades overseas. So upon finding out this information, I did want to find an avenue. I don’t know if it was really the taxidermy that interested me, but more so, why can’t I learn this?

So I looked into courses overseas, of course in the US and all throughout Europe, and that’s fantastic if you want to do a couple of weeks. But I decided that I really wanted to throw myself into this and really learn properly and I would like to find a mentor.

So, I did a lot of research, and I did find that one of the biggest taxidermy studios in Australia happens to be in Melbourne. The person who runs that facility is called Gary Peg and I decided that Gary was going to become my mentor. The only issue with that is that Gary didn’t know that he was going to become my mentor.

So, you know, you start out quite nicely, as email enquiries go. And so this email [indicates slide] is simply called ‘Enquiry’. ‘January 2, 2012, enquiry: Hi Gary, I’ve done quite a bit of reading on yourself and your experience in the taxidermy industry. I’m extremely interested to learn. However, I am unable to find anyone who offers courses or teaches.

‘I’ve emailed once before to see if you would offer lessons or require someone to volunteer on weekends, and also contacted Julia DeVille who referred me back to you. If you are unable to assist, I know that you travel to the States to learn, is there someone you could recommend over there? Any assistance you could provide would be greatly appreciated.’

So, of course, Gary didn’t respond and I started to look back into courses over in the US. I actually booked one to go over there and do. Then two weeks later I sent Gary another email. Don’t worry, I actually sent 200 — you’re not going to have to sit here for 15 minutes while I read 200 emails.

But I will give you a little glimpse of my experience. So, this one’s called ‘Follow-up’. ‘Hi Gary, just following up on my recent emails. I’ve extensive reading on you and note that you’ve won a world championship for a black cockatoo. Well done. Would love to hear from you in relation to learning or helping out. Nat.’

So, at this point, Gary doesn’t respond, of course. Another few weeks goes by. I decide to cancel my ticket to the States because Gary’s going to teach me. So, now it’s Valentine’s Day and you can tell I don’t have a partner because I’m emailing Gary. This one’s called ‘Interest in taxidermy’.

‘Hi Gary, really looking forward to hearing from you. I’ve cancelled my ticket to the States to learn, because I know that you are my man.’

You really shouldn’t say that with #metoo movement. It’s like not ideal right now.

‘Will keep on reading up in taxidermy in the meantime. And if I don’t hear from you, I will email you in another two weeks. P.s. happy to work for free.’

So, when you start sending 200 emails it becomes really difficult to come up with clever content. So, this one happened at two in the morning.

‘Hi Gary, I’m well, thanks for asking. I hope you are too. I went to an exhibition on taxidermy and it was fantastic. Let me know if you want the details. Perhaps I could take you to it? I’ve been reading lots and looking things up online. However, it seems that you are the cream of the crop. So, I’m just going to sit here waiting patiently, drowning my sorrows in red wine, until I hear from you. Can come out anytime you like on Saturdays. Nat.’

He didn’t respond to that. I mean, I thought that was quite clever. Now I’m really running out of stuff to say. So, this is March.

‘Hi Gary, I notice you’ve updated your website. It looks great. Much more user-friendly and the photos are fabulous. Can’t wait until I come out one day. Did I mention I would work for free? Nat.’

Finally, in June: ‘Hi Natalie, please stop emailing.’ It took six months. You’re either going to go to jail for stalking or the guy’s going to take you on. ‘Hi Natalie, please stop emailing me. Give me a call at home and perhaps we can talk some time. If you’re this serious, we can throw some ideas around. Regards, Gary.’

So, I go out to Thomas town. It’s this industrial area in Melbourne, and I go out with my little lipstick and blonde hair and I probably had inappropriate footwear on walking on the gravel like a baby giraffe. And I rock up and Gary takes one look at me, and he’s like, you’re not going to last a second.

But little did Gary know, and he should have known better, 200 emails, really. I’m really tenacious. So, this is Gary [points to slide] and I actually worked every weekend for free for three years.

And one of the main issues with this — other than working for free for three years — is that Gary had learned his trade in the States. And despite knocking down that door and breaking down that wall, he was very reluctant to share his information with me. So, essentially after three years of working for free, I was only taught really by Gary how to skin birds. And a professional skinner does not a taxidermist make.

So, I was feeling fairly disheartened with the industry and I took long service leave with my corporate job in insurance and finance, of all things. So I took my long service leave to head over to Spain, and I was really fortunate to make contact with a gentleman named Ramon Garoze. He lives in a little village called Los Ibanez, which is basically in the centre of Spain.

All I knew is that I had to get to the Toledo train station and his wife, Nuerio, was going to be picking me up to take me out to meet him. So we would drive, like, an hour to inland from Toledo. So, I arrived and Ramon doesn’t speak a word of English which is not his issue, I’m in Spain. But I don’t speak a word of Spanish.

I’ve tried three times, but I just can’t seem to pick it up. I also went to Barcelona to learn Spanish, which is stupid because they speak Catalan. You know, that’s a rookie error.

So, I got to Ramon’s studio in Los Ibanez. He’s incredible. When you want to impart knowledge on someone, you can do that even if you can’t speak the same language. He let me live and work with him and shared this knowledge with me without language.

I was really fortunate when I was there that he happened to be building a museum on the history of hunting. So, I was able to work on the museum with him. This is Ramon, and he, I think for me, was the catalyst of thinking, if I’ve worked for free for three years, and then I’ve travelled half way round the world by myself, and lived and worked in a place with someone who can’t speak the same language as me, I wonder if there’s other people like myself in Australia that might like to learn this?

So, I came back and this is when I started Rest in Pieces Taxidermy. Initially I started just teaching one mouse workshop on a Sunday once a month. I did wonder, would people come? I really wasn’t sure if there was interest. And they did come. In fact, we have 700 students now.

The interesting thing to me, is that 90 per cent of my students are females. They’re all from different walks of life. They’re different ages. They’re different races, religions. Meat-eaters, vegans, vegetarians. They don’t have a lot in common other than two very simple things. They’re curious and they have a love for science, art and animals, and it’s a really amazing culmination of that.

So, exactly like, I guess, the students started to come, so did the media interest. So we started to have a lot of TV, magazines, things like that. That’s really positive for essentially what was a dead art trying to revive itself within a country. That’s really positive. But unfortunately, with a lot a press, also in my particular industry, came a lot of death threats.

And so, this is my first one. It was from lovely guy named Val and he said, ‘How is mX posting this? I’m disgusted they’d advertise this barbaric act. I wish death upon no-one but when Natalie does die, I hope it’s as painful as can be.’ And that was my first death threat.

There’s been many since then and I remember when I got that, I was quite destroyed. I was in tears. It’s interesting because it was actually quite healthy for me because I think I got into taxidermy initially because I thought it would be kitsch and cute. But when people start threatening your life, and you realise that you’re an advocate for something, or you’re trying to have a voice, it makes you realise that you need to be very clear about what it is you’re trying to say or advocate for.

So, I think it made me get more serious about the art itself and really question, ‘What am I trying to say?’ And have a strong voice in the industry. So I did muster up the courage to respond to Val.

I said to Val, ‘Hi Val, that’s a shame that you feel like that. I think it’s a privilege to be able to utilise animals once they’ve passed and to bring them back to life. It teaches you the beauty of animals, all about anatomy and just how connected we all are.’ And I do believe that.

It’s been really wonderful because it’s helped me to, I guess, essentially try and create a safe space in a community for all of our students. It helped me to wise up and have a strong point of view on a strong perspective and not play to this kitsch, cute thing. To get really serious about my craft.

But I think that one thing I didn’t really notice, is that through the challenges that I’d encountered of not being able to get into the industry, struggling once I was in it, also getting a lot of flak from the public because we’re not having a lot of discussions about death. We’re not having a lot of discussions about where do animals come from? What are we consuming?

There’s quite an issue with metropolitan communities, I would say. It’s not really country-based, but metropolitan Western societies have a very big issue around dialogue. So it raises things for me.

But what I found is that I also started to become part of the problem. I wasn’t really willing to share all my information. I became very guarded about my business. I didn’t want anyone to compete with me at all. So, I kind of became the very thing that I was trying to challenge when I was trying to break into the industry.

I don’t think I quite realised this until I went back to the United States and I met an amazing woman by the name of Alice Markham. She’s a world champion taxidermist. She’s doing really fascinating work with 3D printing in taxidermy. But more than that, she was so generous in her knowledge. She runs an all-female taxidermy studio and she just set me up with so many contacts.

Lucian, could I have my water? My mouth’s dry from the painkillers. Thank you. This is Lucian, my assistant. He’s an amazing artist. Thanks, babe.

So, she not only imparted her wisdom on me, but she really welcomed me into her community and just hooked me up with the most amazing connections. It was the absolute opposite of what I had experienced in Australia. I think it really made me realise how guarded I had become.

So, when I actually returned to Australia, because of this lady, I realised that it wasn’t going to be enough for me to just teach taxidermy by myself and be frightened and terrified of everyone else in the industry.

What would be a better approach is what Alice was doing and that was trying to find people who were also teaching or, sorry not teaching, but creating under this banner of conservation or restoration of items in the natural world, and see if they would like to become a collective and join my team so that I could teach them how to teach. But also that we could create an environment where we could broaden the knowledge of the skills that aren’t taught in this country.

So, when I came back to Australia, I have collected over the last five years a really amazing team that are now teachers. Most are self-taught. And the first one, well that’s me, so you saw I started with the rat course to, I guess, extend our curriculum.

I wanted to create a pathway of not just doing a beginner workshop but what would an intermediate, what would an advanced workshop look like, so that there’s some pathway for people to navigate. So, we’ve moved into baby chicks, rabbits. I’m writing a rooster workshop right now. Things like that. So, trying to create a pathway.

The second person that I brought onto the team was my best friend, Gerard Gere. He’s one of the most emerging artists in Australia right now. He does incredible work utilising the bones of animals. Together we wrote our skeletal articulation workshop which is really fascinating. It’s the opposite of taxidermy. Taxidermy is the arrangement of skin whereas articulation is really the arrangement of bones. But again, something that hasn’t been taught in Australia that we don’t have access to.

So, I’ve brought him on, and then Sofia Abel Abdullah. She’s a new addition to the team. Sofia is an embalmer at Lonely Pines Funeral Home. So, I’ve brought her on so that we can start to write an embalming seminar and a death positivity workshop. Because in order for our trades to be acceptable, we have to start having dialogue around these topics. So this is a really good place for us to start.

Gavin is my most recent teacher that I’ve signed. Signing Gavin was really an exciting time for me. He’s the head of the veterinary science lab in Sydney. So, he’s my first scientist. He’s joined the team which, it’s so lovely to have, I guess, I wouldn’t say respect. I think that’s the wrong word. But to have people even in academia realise that knowledge isn’t being shared and want to come to a platform like ours to share that information.

So, we’ve just started to write our corrosion casting workshop. We launched that recently. So, you might be familiar with Grunter von Hagen’s work who does a lot of the plastination of humans. So, he made corrosion casting famous but it’s actually been around since the 1500s. So, we’re now doing that.

Then, finally, we have Lucia, who came from an art and a costume design background but does these incredible fox shoulder mounts. So, together we’re writing an advanced taxidermy workshop at the moment for fox shoulder mounts, which is fantastic.

But if it hadn’t of been for Alice I don’t think I that I would have been brave enough to take a group of people under my wing and realise that you can be successful and create success and take people on a journey with you, rather than being guarded or rather than your knowledge or your skill set dropping off.

Not only did we end up with a fantastic team, but one of the beautiful things about now having this new mindset, is that it’s led to a lot of opportunities for us. First we rebranded to Rest in Pieces, breathing life into the dying arts, because I was no longer Rest in Pieces Taxidermy. But it has also meant that I’ve had opportunities to speak throughout the United States with Alice.

I got to be part of a really wonderful project in a little town called Ekalaka in Montana. They run a weekend called Shindig, and this part of Montana is on the KT extinction line. So, they allow families to come out to the museum and do dinosaur digs essentially, and dig up micro-fossils and what have you.

So, really interesting concept because a lot of the time in America people have role models that are celebrities or sports people. So they wanted to bring out people from other countries to try to create role models for the children that were more science based. So, really wonderful project.

I was really lucky because — actually that’s my six foot eight bass player partner who knows nothing about the natural history world [points to slide] but he was quite lucky that we were in Ekalaka, and Nate, my friend who’s standing next to me, who runs the museum, he’s like, ‘I think you need to come out here. We’ve found a mammoth and we really need you to help get it out of the ground.’ So, we got to dig up a mammoth.

Then the following year I got to go back to LA and this time it was wonderful, because I got to take my team and we got to teach. And the reason that we were back in the States, because I got asked to run all the programming for the museum in Ekalaka.

This is Gerard, the skeletal articulation artist that I told you about. He’s actually making a plesiosaur out of thinks like snake bones and a little reptile head. The reason that he’s making a plesiosaur is because we got asked to stay on another week to dig up a plesiosaur.

I tell you, when I started trying to break into the taxidermy world, now eight years ago, these are certainly things that I never thought I’d have the opportunity to do. They’re not really the things that you have the opportunity to do in Australia, but I do believe that we can create a different culture of sharing information and making things accessible so that, I guess, we can experience these things. There wasn’t a point when I started taxidermy when I thought that I would be digging up dinosaurs. I guess that’s the stuff that is like childhood fantasies.

So, what we’re trying to do now, I guess, is we want to continue to teach the general public. Also, it’s been interesting because we’re now starting to see that people in academia and people in museums, they are starting to get funding for their professional development to come and learn from us, so that they can take the skills back to work on their own collections in museums or what have you.

But we just want to, I guess, maintain and make sure that we are not just focussing on academia or trying to get funding. We really want to keep a level playing field for teaching people. Because education isn’t necessarily for everyone but knowledge should be.

So, I’m going to call time. Lucky because that was my last slide. Thank you guys.

MICHELLE NEWTON-EDWARDS: Thank you so much for that amazing talk.

We’re going to just take a very quick 10-minute break now for anybody who needs to use the restrooms. They’re just outside to the right outside of the theatre. And if I could ask you to just stay in the vicinity of the Visions Theatre and to please be seated in 10 minutes so we can recommence. Thank you.

VICTORIA PEARCE: So, we’ve obviously got an awful lot of interesting speakers and I’m really thrilled that Natalie came even though she’s injured her foot and was able to speak to us.

I’d like to introduce Aaron Smith who’s the keyhole surgeon. Surprising how many people ask me, ‘Keyhole surgery? I thought that was up and coming in medicine.’

Okay, so Aaron works on heritage locks because you can’t really replace an old building’s security and locks on a door with a key swipe. It’s not authentic. So, I’ll let Aaron talk to you about his work, which is quite interesting as well.

AARON SMITH: I tend to talk around; I’m a TAFE teacher. So, I won’t stand in one spot and I’m a locksmith so I won’t stand in one spot. Thank you very much, Victoria. Thank you for Natalie’s talk. I found that amazing.

I didn’t write any notes. I just wrote the Powerpoint and I’ll just turn around and I’ll look at it. So, I’m a locksmith. I cut keys, fix locks, repair things. So, there we go. I’m glad I got a chuckle out of that. Last time I put that gag up, I didn’t get anything. I didn’t know what was going on but it was also for the Furniture History Society of Victoria. 1982 might be a little bit too modern.

So, like it says simply, I cut keys to old locks and repair them. I actually teach apprentices. I’m the lead teacher of locksmiths in Melbourne. So, we teach apprentices from Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Northern Territory. So, the bad locksmiths in ACT and New South Wales aren’t my problem.

I was one of the last classically trained locksmiths under the very old locksmithing system. I was directly taught by a graduate or person who worked at Chubb locksmiths who was taught by a person who worked at Chubb, who worked at Chubb in London.

So, yes, I also did my apprenticeship under a locksmith who was the last locksmith of Pentridge. Which side? The good side. He was on the right side of the door. The side with the key. He got to leave every day.

He spurred me on to becoming what we are now talking about as a heritage locksmith. He unfortunately got motoneuron disease and he died. So, I kind of felt I needed to do something about that. It wasn’t good enough that I would just go, ‘It’s okay, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.’

I thought I’d better actually get my act together and start promoting the fact that locksmiths are out there and we do have some skills. We’re not just simply part-swappers, as much as people would like us to be sometimes. We’re problem-solvers. That’s what we do.

I know that I’m on a time limit so, please, I’ll quickly whip through these slides. So, how important are the locksmithing skills? Well, we touch on sustainability, we touch on connection, heritage, preservation, and why can’t you just 3D print it? Well, I can, but CSRI won’t let me.

So, let’s have a look at sustainability. Less waste. It’s already made, why make it again? It won’t be as good, I can tell you that for a fact. If this had a laser pointer on it. Oh, it does. That is an Alban lock made by Charles Alban 1850. Guess what? Cut a key, it still works. That is a Cotterill key. Put it in a lock, it still works. You don’t have to make them again. That lock is over 150 years old [points to slide], make a key, it still works. No problems. Just like it did the day it came out the factory in Wolverhampton.

People are connected with these objects. I’ve got a five-and-a-half-year-old son, baby of the digital age. I can give him a key and he innately knew what it was. Not because he’s a locksmith’s son, but because for millennia we have used keys. We know exactly what they do. It’s ingrained in us as humans.

As a species we know exactly what those things do. You give a kid a key, they will shove it in something. Any parents in the room? You know exactly what I’m talking about.

People connected to these objects through the repair. I involve them as much as I possibly can. I try to take as many photos. I share this on Instagram. I really want people to feel that they’re part of it and they’re connected to it.

Hopefully, here we go [points to slide], this is one of my customers, Earnest. Earnest immigrated to Australia 40 years ago with a piece of furniture that he bought specifically for his family. He couldn’t find a locksmith who could remake that. Well, that’s not it, that’s the second one that I made for him. And that’s Earnest holding them. His daughter’s now 43 years old. She will finally get her inheritance working.

This lock here, brought in to me by a gentleman who is a fairly well-known author and illustrator. His grandfather, at the ripe age of 16, went to fight in the First World War. That was his kit bag lock. That is the only thing he has. All I did was clean it, test it, hand it back to him.

You want to feel connection, that’s it. That’s why I do this job. Heritage, simply replacing a lock on an antique home or unique piece of furniture is incredibly difficult. I know. And can result in irreparable damage. That lock there is from Dame Nellie Melba’s personal dressing case. So, I’ll just whip down to Bunnings, I’ll go and buy a $15 lock and I’ll just whack it on there. No.

So, what else do we do, other than making keys? Our best thing is that we can non-destructively open just about anything. If it was made by hand, made by human, we can open it. If we can’t, we’ll get a gun and go and get somebody else to open it for us. Easiest way to rob a bank.

So, what other locksmithing heritage skills? They are predominantly problem-solving. We can pick up something tangible, we can pull it apart, we can work out how it works, and we can put it back together again. Unfortunately that is the thing that we cannot pass on to people as much as we would like. The modern syllabus that I teach at trade school and has been rewritten, has 990 hours of training off the job.

In that time, I’ve got to teach them about car locks, engineering, problem-solving communications. I’ve got to also teach them how to make coffee for their bosses and a whole bunch of other things, including opening safes and repairing them and, you know, all of the domestic things that we do.

So, this lock is from 1774 and imported from this family and their antique [inaudible]. That’s just a cupboard lock that we can do things. Preservation. A good locksmith will give you a sympathetic and holistic understanding of security.

A good locksmith, this is a vocation. This is something that we do for life. We don’t just do it because it will pay the bills. A good locksmith, this is what we live and breathe, hopefully. My wife would probably say we live and breathe it a bit too much. A long-suffering locksmith’s wife.

So, what are we preserving other than locks and keys and some of our cultural heritage, is that we’re also preserving our mind-trade heritage. That’s what we’re here for. Understanding the mechanical principles and developing the ability to see inside, developing that ability to have that mental image of what’s going on inside the lock. Which is really handy if the lock’s about that far away through solid concrete and steel and you’re trying to open a safe and the customer’s standing over your shoulder, saying, ‘Is it open yet?’

It’s a lot easier in the movies. Or if you came today, ‘Why doesn’t it click? Is it only for the movies?’ Yes, it is. That’s why the last time I saw it in a movie there were talking chipmunks in it as well.

So, can’t you simply 3D-printed it all? Yes. 3D printing is an extremely handy tool and I have used it. It’s amazing and it makes my mind boggle. But, and here’s the big caveat [inaudible], I don’t have access to a 3D-printing facility that allows me to print in metal. Monash University doesn’t want to share, and nor does CSRIO.

You can commercially buy a 3D printed locks and keys. Stealth key, I saw it in Portugal last year. It blew my mind. I was like, ‘What do you mean that you can 3D print a lock?’ You can. You can 3D print keys out of metal and they work really well. But they’re $2500 each.

So, for some people in the room that’s probably not bad. You can afford that. It’s probably in your budget somewhere. For the rest of us in the real world, it’s not. They’re also made out of the same stuff that’s the rocket jets for Elon Musk. They’re made out of the same material.

So, we need to ask ourselves some questions. Would adding a 3D-printed part add more value to the object? Would it be sympathetic and would that part tell the human story embedded in the lock?

If the answer’s no, that’s fine. If the answer’s yes, okay, great. Cool, I’ll stop doing what I’m doing and I’ll leave it to 3D printers.

So, the value of training in a traditional trade or any trade really, is we learn the value or lessons of the value of tangible work. We, you, me, every living being on this planet, is designed to make things tangibly. We are not designed to make coffee or websites for our whole life. That’s not what we’re all put on this planet for, in my humble opinion. What we do need is a bridge from traditional skills to conservation sciences.

I’m a locksmith, I’m not silly. I’ve gone and done various bits and pieces. I’ve travelled around the world, thanks to fellowships and other things, but I can’t make the jump to conservation sciences. I can’t do it. I don’t have the ability, the time, the energy to devote myself to another four years of study for that much extra knowledge, in my humble opinion, once again.

We need help to address the aging workforce. Paul wasn’t old. He was 60. That’s not old at all. But I couldn’t beat Motor Neuron Disease.

And there are people in my industry who need an outlet, who need an ability to give people what they know. And that’s what the traditional trade is for. Really, that’s what this event’s about.

I’ll wrap it up. I saw flashing lights, so I’m getting out of here. Thank you very much. I’m the keyhole surgeon, thank you.

Sorry everybody, this is Garry, he’s a heritage plasterer. Sorry, no, he’s not. He’s Garry the French polisher. He’s amazing, you should listen to him. Don’t leave.

GARRY MCLAUGHLIN: It happens all the time.

Sorry, this is a first for me. So, good evening everyone. It’s great to see everyone here. My name’s Garry McLaughlin and I’m actually a trade qualified French polisher. I’d like to learn plastering one day though.

I completed my trade back in 1988 and I was awarded the leading apprentice of the year. I have worked across the whole sector, from polishing office furniture on a production line through to my passion, which is traditional hand polishing.

I’m committed to passing on my knowledge and the skills in the trade as the owner of the traditional furniture restorer and we’re located in east Queanbeyan. Over the last 17 years, I’ve trained five apprentices. I’m proud to say our business still currently employs three of them.

The others have gone on to open their own business or are still working the furniture sector. We’re currently looking for a young apprentice to take on, so if anyone knows someone that’s artistic, willing to learn, we’ve got over 45 years, 50 years’ experience in our workshop to pass on.

I’m pleased to have this opportunity to share my concerns with the persistent erosion of the traditional trades and the qualifications. On our current path, we’re facing the foreseeable extinction of this knowledge, yet the trades still have a great relevance in modern society.

Tonight I’d like to share my experience and talk about why this is and, more importantly, where the future opportunities lie. Before I continue, I’d just like to clear up one misperception in regards to the definition of my trade. French polishing is actually the process of finishing timber surfaces. It’s not a material.

The materials used in French polishing range from the traditional application of shellac to modern spray lacquer finishes. So, we’re trained in a broad area, like locksmiths are. These skills have been developed over the last 250 years and, in my opinion, are in the danger of being lost in the near future.

It’s important to remember a trade isn’t taught, but it’s learned. You start your apprenticeship at the bottom. You sweep floors, you make coffee. You assist your craftsmen and over the four years, you’ll develop into a capable tradesman.

You then spend the rest of your career honing your craft. So, every day you learn. The day stop learning, is the day to walk away from it. You never know everything. I learned things from my first year.

The aim is to master the entire trade, starting with traditional skills that can be transposed to modern finishing. To achieve this, you need good mentoring, support and training delivered by your tradesman, a competent RTO — for example, TAFE New South Wales — and the support of the government.

I believe custom behaviour drives the entire furnishing supply chain. The current market trends for the flat-pack assembly, and cheaper imported furniture are putting a lot of pressure on the traditional manufactures in our sector.

In the last 10 years, there’s been a 12 per cent decline in businesses in solid furniture manufacture. That is a 17 per cent decline in employment and this directly affects apprenticeship numbers. As an example, there’s currently a total of 45 polishing apprentices in New South Wales and ACT, compared to when I started, there were 200 first-years alone. And it was an endangered trade in the early 1980s.

To survive, businesses focus on training for their own production and profit desires, as opposed to the long-term skilling improvement and trade appreciation. It results in the narrowing of the workforce skills. The French polishing school of TAFE New South Wales based in Sydney, is under pressure from ministry to soften the focus on traditional skills and to shorten the time taken in the delivery of the training courses.

So, this a really good example. And in my trade over the last 10 years, the Polycade industry, supplying the gloss kitchen doors — believe it or not, that is a form of French polishing. It has seen this business become a major employer of apprentices. In turn, they’re putting pressure on the TAFE system to remove the traditional skills from what they’re teaching. Yes, it’s just going to be terrible.

But 60 per cent of the businesses in the furnishing industry are non-employing businesses, which means they’re a single person business. It’s not because the lack of demean for the skilled craftsmen. They just don’t employ and they don’t put apprentices on. It’s important to remember that trends change and when this happens, the traditional skills required will be gone.

When the market trends shifts, or we face a period of economic downturn, businesses require a more productive workforce of a broader range of skills. This change is happening now. Millennials are a bunch of socially conscious consumers, with 75 per cent willing to pay extra for sustainable products. As the largest demographic in the workforce, their spending power is changing the trends in consumer behaviour. Young people are investing in items that will see the test of time.

Customers are increasingly discerning as they gain more product knowledge, thanks to Google and the Facebook marketplace. We are seeing less brand loyalty to the brands like Ikea, and a move away from the mass production to individual design items.

My business personally has seen a massive growth in the upcycling of furniture. It’s common for a client to source assorted pieces from the tip or the roadside and invest in their revival.

In response to this design trend, we’re developing and perfecting our traditional finishes, such as the bleach shellacs and black shellacs, decorative finishing. These finishes are moving away from the traditional dark browns of yesteryear. So the dark old antiques.

There is a growing market keen to invest in the conservation and restoration of their family pieces. There’s a sentimental investment which is maintaining a family history and preserves a sense of belonging.

Another growth in this industry is the heritage building restoration and conservation, for example government buildings and courthouses. This used to be the domain of painters and decorators. They’ve lost that skill. I talk to a 60-, 70-year-old painter and decorator and he knows exactly what I do. A new painter knows how to use a spray gun. There’s limited skilled tradesmen to perform this work.

So, for example, I spend a lot of time talking to TAFE in Sydney. But TAFE in New South Wales has just developed and delivered a course for a Sydney-based heritage and conservation-based company.

The business was unable to source suitably trained local employees, and as such has brought 15 staff in on working visas. The course was geared to them, to conservation and the refinishing of timber in those heritage buildings, using traditional skills and the materials, teaching them how they work and so they could understand it.

They actually offered the head of the department a job. And he said, ‘I can’t’. He said, ‘I need to stay at TAFE and train.’ He said that’s his place.

The preservation of a traditional trade training with fully completed trades, not the softening, increases transferability and the adaptability for both the industry and the individual. This enables knowledge transfer and successive planning.

Trade skills encourage the development of creativity, problem-solving and innovation in the workplace which is now needed to meet the increasing and changing demand of the market. This is an example. We had a client with a console radio cabinet, which was a family piece. Deep sentimental attachment.

The valve radio had been chucked out years ago. It had been in a garage covered in mouse-poo etcetera. They wanted to know if we could restore the cabinet. He thought if we could put a little shelf in the back, he could store his liquor bottles and turn it around. He said, ‘In that way we get to keep it.’

So, Tara, who was my apprentice at the time, suggested, why don’t we turn it into a cocktail cabinet, with an opening top, a bottom door, we’ll spin off. Line it with mirror, LED lining, so it looks like a 50s, 60s cocktail bar. And we did it.

Which was great, and I’ve lost my place, I’m really sorry.

So we re-engineered it, we did all the fit-out. From the outside it just looked like a console radio from the 1920s. But when you opened it, it was just magic. They absolutely loved it.

So, this is creativity and problem-solving in action. Events like this, in the trade show on the weekend, in my opinion, helped to build awareness of the traditional trades. They’re important in showing young people other career path options.

These trades provide youth with the opportunity to express themselves, to be creative and use their hands. They allow you to challenge your mind and to keep on learning. Elements that are important for our youth.

As I’ve mentioned, currently our apprenticeship systems is being slightly softened by pressure. The other big contributing factor is the reduction in funding allocated to the safe system. What were previously three-year trade courses, have been reduced to two years. And in some trades, to 18 months.

This simply reduces the quality of the tradesmen coming up. You know you ask friends, like if you know a good plumber when you can’t find one. So, what about trades like mine? And that’s a licenced trade. It’s so important to keep investing in the training institution for better outcomes. Like polishing in Sydney is fighting for survival. They had a school there, would not let an apprentice finish in 18 months. They have to go for three years

In his opinion, you need the training delivered by them, the employer, their tradesmen and do it over a period of time to be a competent tradesman. Government incentives in sport and recognition of traditional trades is critically important.

When I employed my first apprentice in the ACT, it took me eight months to even have my trade recognised in the ACT by the government. And it took even longer for the TAFE New South Wales to be approved as a training provider for my apprenticeship.

Removing these types of barriers make a big difference to preserving traditional skills and knowledge. I’d also like to point out, I’m also now in New South Wales. And New South Wales training is highly supportive of apprentices, which is really good to see. We’re funding in regional areas and everything to help them out.

I hope that one message you take away from this, is the need to preserve the traditional trades. It’s important for industry to maintain its flexibility, its adaptability, and therefore profitability.

The employees in turn, have a more fulfilling career that allows them to develop their creativity, their problem-solving skills, which encourage innovation for the future. It allows Sidey to preserve its heritage and focus on sustainability.

As a craftsman, it’s important to ensure the traditional skills are passed on for the future. But it is hard to find an apprentice with the right fit. It’s expensive and at times frustrating passing on these skills. I’ve spoken with many tradesmen who say, ‘I’ve spent four years training my apprentice, and then they just get up and leave. I’m not going to waste my time training any more.’

But that’s the wrong way to look at it. What it really means, is you’ve invested four years of your time mentoring a young mind, ensuring your passion, knowledge and skills are preserved for future generations. Just like your children, you watch them grow with your guidance, and eventually they’ll leave home. And you’re proud of them, not bitter. It’s an honour to see an old apprentice achieving their goals and pursuing their craft.

As a craftsman, we need to remember that we don’t train apprentices because we want to, we train because we have a moral obligation to society and to future generations to preserve these skills. Thank you.

VICTORIA PEARCE: Thanks everyone. We’d now like to welcome Scott McMillan who is the craftsman plasterer to the stage. Thank you Scott.

SCOTT MCMILLAN: You’re very welcome. First of all I would just like to thank Gary for his very passionate speech there on how endangered heritage trades are, because it really is a very strong passion of myself, that we do try and pass these skills on from generation to generation. So thank you very much, Garry, for that.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is Scott McMillan. I’m a traditional solid plasterer and I work on heritage buildings across Queensland conserving ornate and age-old plaster work. And yes, that is a Scottish accent you hear. My wife was joking earlier that I should have subtitles going on in the background so you can maybe understand what I’m saying. I hope you get the gist of what I’m saying here tonight anyway.

So, I’m going to guide you through my profession and give you some insight into why the trade is still very relevant in today’s modern world. We’re at a point where we really need the next generation to take up traditional trades as a profession.

I want to thank the team, Endangered Heritage, for organising this fantastic event so that we can help to raise the profile of this very important cause.

Yes, got it! [indicates slide] So, nervous about that.

So, I started my career 16 years ago in a small town just outside Glasgow. I’d always been creative and enjoyed art and technical woodwork classes at high school, using my hands to create things. I was also known as a big friendly giant. Given my size I knew I could cope with the physical demands of my trade.

Through recommendations from a family friend, I was lucky enough to take on an apprenticeship with one of Scotland’s most reputable ornamental plastering companies. The apprenticeship was over four years including an advanced craft certificate in cornice restoration work through a technical college.

This was an incredible opportunity. The apprenticeship didn’t come without its challenges and I wouldn’t be the tradesman that I am today, without those formative years which have set me up for a lifetime in this unique trade. After [inaudible] with this company as a foreman, carrying out works on behalf of Historic Scotland, I received an invitation to come over here to Australia where traditional solid plastering is something of a critically endangered trade.

Solid plastering is in fact one of the most ancient handcraft trades, given that depth of plasterwork can be found on the Egyptian pyramids that are more than 4000 years old. Plastering really is a dinosaur craft of the building trade.

So what does a traditional solid plasterer do? Well, I can save and restore old plasterwork found in heritage buildings and homes. Old plasterwork is subject to movement and water damage over time. Often this is seen in the form of cracks, sagging, discolouration and loose plaster.

So, my job is to reinstate heritage plaster elements back to their former glory. To do this, I employ a range of handcraft skills and traditional tools. I also work with traditional materials such as horsehair lime putty.

My work includes conserving and restoring decorative plaster features like ceiling roses, carboes and ashways, along with [inaudible] cornice, which you can see here with the custom-made running mould. Horsehair lime lath and plaster ceilings, exterior sand and cement facades and cement mouldings.

My main focus is to conserve as much of the original plasterwork as possible, so that I can retain the integrity of the building’s fabric. That way we can look at these rooms with the beautiful plasterwork. We can essentially step back in time and admire them the way they were meant to be admired.

In a fast-paced mass-production world, traditional plastering, like many traditional trades, has become something of a lost art. Authentic specialists are rare, given today’s focus on teaching and practicing modern mass-production methods that are quick and designed for quick outcome mass production. So, unfortunately there has been a real decline in the passing down of intricate art design skills from the older generation.

Old school plastering skills are vital in correct conservation of our built heritage. Because inexperienced trades people employing the wrong techniques and modern materials can have a disastrous and irreversible impact on heritage buildings.

Whereas the careful craftsmanship employed by traditional plasterers, demonstrates the utmost respect to the original building fabric and ensures issues such as moisture build up, cracking and shrinkage do not threaten the building structure or aesthetics. So these traditional skills really do help to safeguard the integrity of heritage buildings for generations to come.

The company I started, McMillan Heritage Plastering, is one of the few traditional plastering companies in Australia that still adopt authentic and [inaudible] methods, instead of relying on modern mass-produced alternatives.

With my day-to-day work, I consult with my clients — whether they be heritage architects, local government representatives or private home owners — on the appropriate heritage practices and materials to use during restoration works. My clients are focussed on ushering these buildings, which are often heritage-listed, into the modern day while still retaining their old-world charms.

These buildings and their rooms are often lying derelict for some time and people are often surprised that the plasterwork can be saved. But we are very familiar with working on extremely fragile and damaged plaster elements that we need to be very careful and considerate of.

The attention to detail surrounding restoration projects, means we also need time and as we all know, these days, time is a very valuable commodity. So, as heritage plasterers, we have to adapt and complete very intricate work as quickly as possible while still maintaining the utmost care. That always keeps me on my toes. Always.

One of the most innovative aspects of this trade is when we have a real meeting between the old and new. Where other skills are employed on heritage buildings that are being modernised in some way, such as a state-of-the-art fire sprinkler system being installed throughout the decorative ceilings at Old Parliament House. Where we need to carefully conserve the existing ceiling, even though chunks of it are being removed to install the sprinklers.

Or a heritage-listed turn of century townhouse being transformed into an upmarket restaurant. Our task being to preserve the character of each room whilst breathing new life into its walls.

Each project has its own set of challenges and usually a contractor wanting the work done yesterday. But it’s exciting to see our traditional skills playing a part in some of the newest, most innovative developments in our cities today.

In 2019 it is not easy to find qualified traditional plasterers. I’m fortunate enough to work alongside a 62-year-old, old-school solid plasterer. This fine specimen of a man here, on my left. So, Mr Paul Colin is his name actually, and he’s been able to share his knowledge with myself and demonstrate an excellent array of skills and decades of experience in the trade which he has readily shared with me.

He is genuinely hesitant to retire because he understands the difficulty of finding new recruits. He’s concerned about the future of the trade that kept him in consistent work for 40 plus years.

This trade offers great careers full of creative, unique and consistent work opportunities. There are always going to be old buildings needing repair. We get the keys to some of the most incredible places in town. We want the next generation inspired to take up this important profession and pass on the knowledge and skills that we were fortunate enough to receive.

Traditional solid plastering has an important place in Australia today. If the trade can save buildings that were once thought to be beyond repair, it can help to usher older buildings into the modern world with the utmost respect and care. And it can help to safeguard our built heritage.

This dinosaur trade really does have a promising future. Not just in Australia, but all over the modern world. As a traditional plasterer, I’m disappointed to see my colleagues around Australia retiring without having passed on their knowledge and skills. It’s a shame that they haven’t afforded the means, through grants, colleges and trade schools, to formally impart their knowledge. Instead of bringing over another Scotsman like myself, it would be great to see some young Aussies coming up through the ranks.

I hope my talk this evening has been informative. Thanks everyone for your attention and support today. Thank you.

MICHELLE NEWTON-EDWARDS: Thank you. Please welcome conservator David Hallam.

DAVID HALLAM: Thank you Scott. I note with admiration Scottish heritage. Scottish heritage is one of those institutions that we in Australia should try and follow.

I’m going to explore the skills that are required by a good objects conservator. Conservators treat objects to stablise them, based on the best science and skills available at the time. We are currently losing skills and treatment ability through constraints put on educational facilities, internship possibilities and managerialism.

I will try and explore ways to overcome this. ‘Losing the edge, the risk of decline of practical skills, conservation skills.’ This was a paper by Jonathan Ashley Smith of the Victorian Albert Museum. I’ll quote briefly from it. ‘Our people have become more sophisticated, but less wise. Intellectually more elaborately taught, but practically less competent.’

To continue, there is a danger that the opportunities to learn and maintain the necessary skills for high-level, hands-on conservation are diminishing. The causes of this loss are many. But they impact every stage of the educational process for a potential developing conservator. The time dedicated to practical craft in primary and secondary education, is being reduced and the qualifications for non-academic studies downgraded.

Skills, what skills does a conservator need? Based on the best data available, they need the ability to make decisions. They need the ability to carry out decisions. They need treatment ability and confidence. If you’re not confident about treating something, you’re going to stuff it up.

An example. An anchor. [indicates slide] This one here came into this institution and we waxed it. We did everything that we would normally do with something like this. It was going on to go on display in a weeks’ time.

We came back to the Museum storage and treatment facility out at Mitchell after a very hot, humid weekend. And in the second slide, you can see what we saw. We saw little globules of water on it. We had a week in which to get this thing on display.

Now, if you got your finger, and you touched that globule and you touched it on your tongue, what did you taste? Salt. How do you get rid of salt on an anchor? Well, you can connect it up to electrodes and put in water and five years later … you’ve got a week.

What does sodium chloride do when you heat it? It volatilises. So you get out a blowtorch, and you heat that area until all of the yellow flame disappears, then there’s no more salt. Then you wax it, because it’s still nice and hot, and off it goes for display.

It’s an understanding of the science, an understanding of your materials and the confidence and, dare I say, arse, to do it. You need analytical skills. The ability to work with scientists. You don’t actually have to be a scientist yourself. But it’s pretty good if you are. The ability to organise information. If you can’t organise and find information, then you aren’t going to be a conservator. The ability to work with engineers. You need research skills. The ability to collect information.

It some ways it’s a hell of a lot easier now. Mr Google does help. Google Scholar helps too. But you also need to know that books actually exist and that sometimes you need to use them. You need to understand how — experimental method development.

And again, as I said, you need the ability to work with scientists. You need the ability to work with engineers. You need craft skills. You’re going to need some craft skills of your own. You know, if you’re a metals conservator, then you’d expect that you can bend metal, join metal together. Polish metal.

If you’re a wood, organic objects conservator, then you’d expect you’d have some woodworking skills. If you’re a book conservator, then you’re going to need some bookbinding skills.

If you’re a conservation scientist, then we’d expect you’d have some chemistry trade skills. In other words, you can actually do titration. You know how to look after electrodes for a PH meter. If you’re a technological objects conservator, then you’ll need to understand engineering methods, or composite materials.

Okay, you’re a conservator. You need planning skills. You need to be able to do it sitting at the tea table talking to the curator with a cup of coffee and a piece of paper. You need to be able to do it on paper. You need to be able to do it in your mind and then you need to be able to transfer it to a computer. You need the ability to work in 3D in your mind. So you can put something together, without actually putting it together. So, like a smashed vase. You need communication skills, written, verbal.

You need to be able to communicate by doing things. Demonstrating, teaching by example. Documentation skills, organisational skills, photographic skills, microscopic skills. You know, if you want to find out about the paint on this aircraft, you’re going to have to take a cross-section. So, you’re going to have to take a slice out of it. Then you’re going to have to mount it in resin. Polish it, then stick it under a microscope. No-one does that for you. That’s what you as a conservator do. You need digital skills.

You need to be able to work out how to photograph it, how to manipulate, how to join those. Written skills, and then of course once you’ve done all that, you need to be able to archive whatever material you’ve produced.

You need the ability to work with other people. Engineers, designers, architects, volunteers, grumpy old men, engineers. Grumpy old engineers. You need the cultural competence to work out how you’re going to move the wing of a World War Two aircraft using staff from the National Museum of Papua New Guinea.

A degree does not make you a conservator, though. You know, training will teach you some of the theory. You can get that at university, but really, the thing that actually teaches you, is what an old physics professor said to me, knees under the bench. Time working with someone else.

You can have all the formal qualification in the world, but unless you get that time working with someone else who’s already done it, it’s going to be very hard. Your real training is doing stuff under guidance, repetitively.

You need to have permission to fail, to screw it up. And then for someone to show you how to fix it. So, you need to get it totally wrong. And time again, you’ll notice I’m coming back again to this thing, confidence, time building confidence in your skills. Because if you don’t have confidence in your skills, you’re not going to be able to do it.

What causes loss of skills? Managerialism. Managerialism contains elements of magical thinking. A messiah complex. It believes that if you have the right man in charge, success is assured. Managerialism believes that there is a distinct skill of management that can be applied anywhere. Managerialism imposes targets and discipline from the top down.

Now, in cultural institutions in Australia, this has been one of the problems since the breakdown of the old professional offices system in the nineties, and it’s been a continued problem through into the 2010s. Good management also knows that some things in particular respond badly to heavy-handed bosses.

One of these is long-term work. Conservation is long-term work. Preservation of skills is long-term work. I’m glad to see that the National Film and Sound Archive is planning for preservation of skills. I don’t think any of the other museums throughout Australia are, state or federal.

That is such a pity. Conservation skills are one of the things that’s a long-term work. Once skills are lost, you cannot just purchase them. They have to be reinvented.

As other people have pointed out, one of the things that’s limiting or increasing the loss of skills, is the limited internship in our case, rather than apprenticeship opportunities. So, it’s the cost of internships and the cost for the employer.

One of the other things that we certainly see is, you know, if you’ve done a three-year degree and then a two-year masters, you’re going to feel like you’ve got there. I mean, you’ve put in a hell of a lot of effort. You hate someone like me saying, ‘Well, you’re not actually a conservator yet. You haven’t had your knees under the bench for long enough.’

So, lots of people already feel qualified. Yes, I’ve got a masters. Well, whoopee, I don’t. And the pressures from Hecs debt.

How do we fix it? We need a professional will. So the profession needs to see what’s wrong with itself. Institutional will, is also needed. Private backing. Change of the course of structures. Change of the status of internships. Internships need to be compulsory and funded. And we need to truly appreciating the conservation and heritage skills.

Thank you.

MICHELLE NEWTON-EDWARDS: Thank you very much David, and now I’d like to welcome, from Endangered Heritage, conservator Victoria Pearce.

VICTORIA PEARCE: Thanks David. I won’t be talking too much about preservation of conservation skills per se, but I am kind of pleased that we take on eight interns a year. I’ll just breeze through this to save us a bit of time.

We have a team of conservators out at Fyshwick in Gladstone Street. We cover all forms of conservation, paintings, textiles, books, paper, metals, glass, ceramic, wood, stone, you name it, we’ll do it.

So what are heritage skills? I think we’ve probably covered that off. But skills that require a traditional mode of transfer. They require the sharing of the primary experience of the task. They require the old transfer of knowledge.

Reading a book, albeit important, isn’t the end of the story. Heritage skills are skills which have inherently got adaptive learning. The master teaches the student to create, not to copy. Engaging youth with the old, or the master, to create an evolution of social capital, not just a product. It’s the evolution of social capital where all Australians win.

Teachers learn from teaching. You don’t actually really know what you know until you can explain it to someone else. So, the whole idea of passing something forward and having apprenticeships also strengthens the teacher. They are forced to hone their skill to justify their teaching and that’s what pulls professions forward.

Some bonus points for heritage skills is that they actually rely heavily on renewable resources and materials, often recyclable. And the artefact is worthy of repair. So, you know, we’ve had a few people say, there’s less waste. And the products from heritage skills are actually under demand globally.

That’s an idea I want to expand on. I started organising this event two years ago and I cannot tell you how many people have said, ‘Well, what’s the point? They’re all dying out. Do we really need them anymore? Like really? You know, they’re just old-fashioned.’

What I want to point out here is that blacksmiths aren’t making armour for knights anymore. Every generation innovates those skills to fit and create the products that are needed for that generation. They’re not static, they’re actually really dynamic. And when we have youth engaging with heritage skills and heritage training, we are going to have innovation.

Just check out the foxes in the taxidermy display. You get really funky, creative, wonderful, new products coming from the use of heritage skills. So, made to order. Not everything can be or should be mass-produced.

In fact, I’d argue, that in our day, these days, where we’re all actually treated by our government as an economic unit, it’s even more important to have the soul-nourishing experience of things that are made and connected with other people. Made from the sweat of their brow, made with their creative input. Because it’s the soul-food that again creates social capital. It’s what binds us as a community, and as a people. It’s what binds us as a nation.

There are certain skills that are so instrumental to Australia and our culture and national gross capital gain, like Coopers. They’re not at our event. Because there’s one family training Coopers in Tanunda in South Australia and they laughed. They said, ‘We can’t spare anyone.’

We’re a wine-making country, we’ve got now gin and whisky trades kicking-off. These guys can’t keep up with demand. Coopers are earning more than top firm solicitors. They can name their price. We’re churning out more than 700 lawyers a year, who are mostly unemployed. My daughter’s a graduate lawyer. She was one of three people in her graduating year to get work. The rest of them five years on are all still unemployed.

So, if you want a good job for your kids with good income and stability, I recommend Cooper. Heritage plasterer, same thing. The other one that I want to just — when I started arranging this event, blew my mind, scientific glassblowers. If you want to do original research in a university, you want to do original experimentation, chances are the glass work is not going to come off the shelf from China.

You are going to have to commission someone to actually blow the glass with the accuracy for scientific reproducibility for publication, customised for your experiment. We have three people in Australia who can do this. They’re servicing all of the universities in Australia. And when they go and die out, what happens to our science people? What happened to the smart country? Wow. And are we going to stop playing musical instruments really, like luthiers?

Cobblers for medicinal shoes. Injuries, critical ski injury, legs two inches shorter than the other, might need a cobbler. I also have a really firm belief that there are an awful lot of industries that can be repurposed and married to new industries.

So, heritage skills can be brought in to completely new industries. It is insane to me, with global warming and deforestation, that we are putting people in wooden boxes to bury them or to cremate them. We’re just setting good timber on fire. What’s that about?

We could be employing basket-weavers to make baskets for the 30,000 funerals that happen every year, or whatever. And basketry’s a renewable resource. Because it’s the twigs and branches off of plants that are used to make them.

And I really think that with the growing medical prosthetic industry in Australia, we also should get the cobblers involved. Because they do actually really understand about comfort.

So, I’d like to see these skills being redefined and married to completely new industries. To actually be completely innovative and creative. And this is a great example we can learn from the Japanese. Traditional Japanese sword-makers go through their complete traditional training — carving stone, coral, filigree metal inlay — you name it, they do it all. Exactly the way it’s been for centuries.

Then they’re making record cartridges for record turntables. These are the little needles. [indicates slide.] You see the diamond needle. That’s blue agate. That one there’s got gold. There’s stone, wood. You can see, absolutely stunning. These cartridges go for 15,000 each, around. People are buying them. They’re exquisite. You can’t tell me that there’s no product or economy using these skills in a sideways manner. And obviously, sword-makers are pretty good at knives as well.

So, I just want to have a little bit of a talk about what happens in global economies and in particular because of globalisation. In a global economy a whole bunch of things happen that means we are using skills and services offshore.

So, all governments, and our government’s gone crazy with STEM this, STEM that, science, technology, engineering and maths. Got to teach more STEM. Do you know every other country is also teaching STEM? You get that, right?

We’re now having a race to the bottom. In the Philippines they have contracts with overseas countries for exporting over 200,000 workers as OFWs, overseas foreign workers, to any country to fill labour gaps. Those labour gaps now are increasingly in the IT sector.

They’re doing website design. They’re doing call centres. They’re working for Apple on their Apple service line. Indonesia’s doing the same. China’s doing the same. India’s doing the same. Seriously?

So, Australia and New Zealand are the only countries that have actually reached First World status from agri-business. Only countries in the world that have reached First World status from agri-business. And yet, we don’t do an awful of value adding with those products.

We have no leather industry anymore. All skins are sent offshore. They’re processed elsewhere, and we buy our leather back. China and India have the fastest and biggest middle-class, and manufacturing products is becoming more expensive.

In 2011 China spent for the first time more on its internal security than it did on its military. You don’t have to be afraid of China. The Chinese dragon is fighting internally to keep social control because the spread and speed of the middle-class, the demands for income growth, the demand for standard of living, has reached such fever pitch, they are not flooding the markets with cheap goods anymore.

I spoke to one blacksmith in arranging this event. He said, the problem with our trade is that people want a wrought-iron fence or gate. And they come to me, and it’s going to cost them $15,000 and they say, ‘Oh well, I’ll just get one that’s been imported from China.’ That’s actually going to dry up. It’s not going to happen. In another five to ten years, their economies are changing so rapidly, that products from China are going to be the same cost as products that we could make here.

And we all know, if you go and buy a pack of screws from Bunnings, the Chinese cheese and screws and hardware, cost the same as the good stuff. That’s going to keep going. That’s going to keep happening. So, it’s not going to be cheaper to import these things. So, global heritage skills are also in decline as all of our speakers have said.

While arranging this event, I received an email, god bless him, from the City Council of Johannesburg. We have got a problem with our heritage skills. We have the cast-iron streetlamps and we can’t get anyone to fix them because we’ve lost those skills. Can you tell me how your event went? Can you actually help us to get our skills back?

Like, of all of the things that we should be exporting, maybe training people and having heritage skills and being the people with the smarts and the problem-solving, not the people running call centres, would be a really good way to go.

So, I’ve got this little idea. And this is where this all really began. That we need to do something here in Canberra. That we’re perfectly situated, we have all of the national institutions. We have a heritage course in conservation. We’re a really small community, 300,000 people, but not a lot of industry. Heritage could actually be our industry.

We’ve got all of the equipment. We’ve got the university, School of Music, art school and reasonable cost of living for students to actually come here. Not like Sydney or Melbourne.

So, Canberra is actually a very good city to be actually piloting how we could actually reinvigorate our heritage skills. One of the reasons these apprenticeships have all failed, is because TAFE and COT have a remit to train people all equally to the same standard.

That’s brilliant if you’re wanting a national standard for electricians or plumbers. They all have to come out exactly the same. All able to walk in the footprints of the other one who went before them.

It’s a safety issue. We have to have building codes. That’s terrific. And training 700 electricians, absolutely what COT should be funded to do, to that national standard. Training 700 blacksmiths, all to the same standard making the same product for the same market-place, is insane. And of course it’s not viable. Of course it’s not the way things should be.

We have gone beyond these skills being trade-based through COT or TAFE. What we really need, is for these skills to be actually taught through university. Because in a university, students get to pick and choose their subjects. And the one thing I know for sure, is if you are trained with a heritage skill profession, you’re going to be self-employed.

So, their first year at university could be in business skills. Marketing, a bit of ethics, social media, communication. That’s what all of these heritage skill professionals are going to need. When they’ve all got those skills and some business skills in their first year at university, they then go and get placed with a trade professional.

Still covered, still paying Hecs like every other university student to bring down the cost to that professional who’s passing on their training and skills. So they are embedded with a professional. They bring with them all of these business skills they’ve just picked up.

So, there’s a really nice exchange which is what heritage training is really about. The teacher learns, the student learns. Then even, maybe, given that some of our traders had to pull out at the last minute, because they’re in their eighties and it’s winter in Canberra, these guys might actually have the skills to be able to take over the businesses.

Assessments could be done in the same way as they are for honour students, with an assessment panel reviewing that person’s work at the end of their three-year degree. They would have a qualification; we could have our heritage skills.

No-one needs to create new syllabuses, no-one needs to create new TAFE, new tooling, new technology. We don’t end up with 700 blacksmiths and no bookbinder. It means that every student can do those common units and have the option of a couple of electives.

So, if you want to be a luthier, you can do a unit at the music school, you can do a unit in woodwork at the art school. You want to be a blacksmith, you can do a unit in metallurgy, you can do a unit in engineering. You want to be a bookbinder, you can do some paper conservation, or papermaking or leather work.

You can actually then niche. Instead of us ending up with 700 people like the TAFE structure created — which was fantastic for contemporary needs and skills — our heritage skills could be saved. And we could actually get this degree happening in a year. Because we’re not creating any new units. They’re already there.

So, we really need people to start demanding that we do something about this, because it doesn’t have to be this way.

And I’d like to have a bit of a pitch for our Indigenous people, especially because it is NAIDOC week. While I have every respect in the world for the incredible arts and crafts sector of the Indigenous community, it trivialises their culture. They have professions. They had so many professions.

You do not have the oldest culture on the planet continuously without them having trades and professions. Food, medicine, celestial navigation. The Australian Federal Police is still using Indigenous trackers, but we’re not doing anything to make sure that those skills are passed on for the next generation. For us, or in case our car breaks down. We need this.

Boat-making. The number of Indigenous skills is crazy, that we can all benefit from. I’m really quite passionate, I really hoped that we’d be able to get some more Indigenous community members at this event. But it’s been really hard with no funding to actually travel them. So hopefully next year we will.

The Indigenous people have been saying for the better part of my life, we’re losing our elders. I hope that if there’s one message that you take home tonight, is so are we.

And if anyone wants to try and tell me that millenary or any of these other heritage trades doesn’t have economic viability into the future, then they need to actually think about Akubra. They make hats. One of the oldest fashion professions around. And they’re one of our biggest and best branded exports.

So, again I’d like to thank you very much for your participation in this event, this seminar. And if you haven’t been around to see all of the amazing work at the Fiddes Workshop, come tomorrow.

We look forward to seeing you again next year. Hopefully next year we’ll have different traders and what we’d like to see this event become, is an event of talent-searching where every year we get different traders who are there because they’re looking for an apprentice. And from all around the country we will get people coming because they are looking for a mentor. And so Canberra can be the hub of this.

Thank you very much.

MICHELLE NEWTON-EDWARDS: Thank you Victoria. I’d like to now invite all of the national endangered skills and trade presenters here tonight onto the stage. We have time for a very brief Q and A session.

If you could just put your hand up if you have a question. Wait for a microphone, and please say who you would like to direct your question to. Thank you. Thank you.

Do we have any questions from the audience?

QUESTION: Thank you for a fascinating and really thought-provoking presentation this evening, all of you. It was just amazing. I’m a teacher here in Canberra and I’m hearing over and over again that you want to get young people involved. What are the plans for getting your — or does anybody have any — getting your professions, your heritage professions into the schools?

Because it’s all very well talking about getting young people involved, but if they don’t know that your professions exist, how do we get them there? I’m an English teacher. I can promote it as much as I can. But the bookbinding is the closest thing that I’ve got to my profession.

VICTORIA PEARCE: Well, I think that’s what been really clear is that all of the people that are here today are really active in teaching and training and taking on interns. And I think you’ll find anyone who’s in any of the heritage professions, actually is. I mean, Natalie’s got 700 students.

How do we get them in younger? By getting teachers to come to these events. Because making sure that our teachers and our parents understand the viability of these professions, means that it’s passed on to the students inherently.

My son went to a particularly privileged ivy league international school in Manilla and I hated it. Because if you didn’t want to be a lawyer or an engineer, any one of those kids who stood up and said, I want to be a hairdresser, they would have got lynched. They didn’t have the freedom or the ability to think outside the box.

I really think that what really it’s going to take, is the public and parents and teachers and events like this to make people say, ‘They’ve got a job doing that. That’s so cool.’ I mean, all of these people here have got amazing jobs. And we at Endangered Heritage do organise public speaking talks to schools. The youngest age group I’ve given a professional talk to was 11 year olds.

NATALIE DELANEY-JOHN: Yes, and I think, just this weekend being able to be demonstrations and things like that, there is some responsibility on parents, families, community to be trying to bring children who have very curious minds. Children don’t have — they’re not as guarded as we are. These are things that we develop as we become adults. If you can, bring children.

I was a bit sad to see today that there’s a lot of older people. But it is sad to see that we don’t have a lot of youth in the audience. So, there has to be some responsibility from the community perspective to be, I guess, trying to take children to see these events.

Take them to the Museum. Take them to an event like this to, I guess, just kind of showcase what is on offer. Kids are curious. They’ll run with it. I don’t know if the responsibility is necessarily on us to take it to schools.

The reason that we have this panel today, is these are people screaming out for it. We are time-poor, we are trying, we are kicking down doors. So I think we have to work hand in hand.

ROBIN TAIT: I’d also like to just add, one of the things that came to me today when I was talking to a lady who was a teacher of primary school students, and she said that at least up to 15 years ago, she was actually teaching students bookbinding in school, as a school subject. It was interesting that up until about, I think it was at least the 1980s, the school curricula having bookbinding or bookcraft in it, was taught for quite some time and it was interesting to see people talking about their experiences as a school child being taught to do bookbinding.

I also encourage you as a teacher to come along to some of the courses that Victoria mentioned, that are taught in these skills. As well as there’s also local groups who are teaching bookbinding or running classes as well that’s just specific to it.

So, I hope to see a renewal of bookbinding in schools. I think it would be a great way of doing it. Particularly for introducing the whole of making of books and telling of stories, either by words or drawings. It gives it an added dimension into use of language and learning to use your hands. And also sequencing stories or ideas.

VICTORIA PEARCE: I just want a show of hands, how many people in this room went to a school, primary school, they had a dedicated art teacher? How many people in this room went to school where they had a dedicated music teacher in the school?

When did it become okay that we did not have that in every school in Australia? When did it become okay for parents and teachers to turn around and say, ‘Yes, we’ll allow these funding cuts to take those skills out of our schools.’

Because teachers, quite frankly, are doing the best they can with the most important asset we have. And suddenly they’re supposed to work outside of their particular skill set or professional area, to cover off all of these skills that should be covered by qualified arts, music, performing arts and sports teachers. It’s not okay. That’s where I think it begins.

DAVID HALLAM: This is just another example of the managerialism approach where anyone can do anything and you don’t actually have to know anything. That’s one of the things we’ve got to get away from. Yes, we do actually need craft teachers. Yes, kids actually do need to know how to cut their fingers.

VICTORIA PEARCE: In fact, even more so now that we’ve got two parents working and they’re not getting that at home. It’s even more critical. No wonder they’re always glued to a moving screen.

QUESTION: Hello, thanks very much for the insight today. My name’s Anders. Michael. I’ve got a question for you in particular, Victoria. I’ve got a background in automotive training and I’ve got a lot to do with automotive trades, and trades through the CIT over the years. The emphasis we’re placing is on young people.

Now, I’m going to toss something at you with the view to this idea of having a qualification that becomes a degree course. Within the trade systems, you’ve got people that are coming through and I’ve been part of that trade system where I’ve watched the trades cut back and cut back for economic reasoning. And you’ve got people that are basically being shoved through.

Now you’ve got students coming in very young. They’re coming through trades for three or four years and they’re being spat out the other end. And a lot of them are leaving the trades that they’ve gone into, and then sitting there going, ‘I haven’t got a clue what to do next.’ But you’ve got people who’ve been trained in electronics, electrics, automotive, building carpentry.

VICTORIA PEARCE: You’re saying blacksmith? He’s one of those.

QUESTION: Well, yes, but what I’m getting to, is you’ve got all these people who’ve got this grounding. They’ve been in the workforce. They’ve got a good grounding. They might work in the trade for five or six or seven years.

All I’m coming at is the idea that we are concentrating really hard on these young people and we’ve got a workforce where you’ve got a situation where by the time some of these people get to retirement age, retirement age won’t be retirement age.

So, you’ve got a situation where you’ve got somebody at 30 who has potentially got another 40 years of valuable life in them, and by the time they’re 30 years old they might actually an inking that, hey, I worked in such and such a trade, but by crikey I’d rather become a blacksmith. And they might already have that working ability, the working ethic, have some background in a lot of things that they can be RPLed [recognised prior learning] for and you can feed them straight into a system.

VICTORIA PEARCE: Brilliant. Frank Lysner is a wooden thread-maker in Queensland and he’s not at our event because he couldn’t put the tools down. He’s too busy, he’s got too many orders. He’s 82.

He was lamenting the difficulty in finding good apprentices. The last guy he had gave up half way through the apprenticeship because he’d hurt his back. Because he was 65. So, I think the opportunity to learn and to teach and to share and to cross-fertilise and to not be siloing knowledge, is really one of the best opportunities.

We’re all being told that we’re going to have two or three careers in our lifetime. So, I hear what you’re saying. And making these skills go through a university program doesn’t mean it’s the only way you have to get them. You know, I’m all for it. If the TAFEs want to start toiling up again, let’s bring it. We’ll find work. There’s work out there.

In the automotive, I think there’s even increasingly more work for people with actual mechanics, not computer training. Because it’s getting pretty hard to find people who can do restoration and work on old motors too. So, there’s plenty of work.

MICHELLE NEWTON-EDWARDS: Thank you Victoria.

We’re coming to the close of our evening. So, I’d just like to thank everyone so much for attending this evening. I think we’ve all learnt a great deal.

We really want to thank our panellists for sharing their knowledge and their passion this evening. So, please join me in thanking our panel.