AIC's 52nd Annual Meeting

The Balboa Art Conservation Center has been on a path to redefine what it means to be a conservation nonprofit and a regional center that is responsive to the ever-changing needs of who we serve. Questions arose, such as “What is our duty to serve the communities in our region beyond traditional collections care services and support?” and “Who is our audience?”. Students and educators outside of the conservation sphere were quickly identified as an audience and community for possible collaborations. With the majority of the advanced conservation training and recruitment efforts to introduce conservation to undergraduate students and K-12 students located on the east coast, BACC undertook the responsibility of fulfilling this need in the west.

BACC is also joining a larger call and mission to diversify the field of art conservation by making the field accessible to underrepresented communities. With programs already in place to serve college-level students or recent graduates interested in conservation, BACC decided to work with a younger audience to introduce the concepts of cultural heritage, preservation, and conservation earlier in their education. With these goals, BACC embarked on establishing its Workforce Development Initiative, designing and implementing programming to engage students at all educational levels in conservation. Over the past year, the programming has taken multiple shapes, as we have responded to the needs of our educational partners.

Ultimately, a train-the-trainer model was adopted with the idea that conservation education can be integrated into curricula. This is essential for establishing a sustainable outreach and advocacy model that is not dependent upon BACC’s ongoing intervention and for dismantling existing barriers to conservation knowledge. A training bootcamp and toolkit were designed to support educators in introducing conservation to students in a classroom setting, weaving the ideas of preservation and conservation into their already established lesson plans and curricula to instill the concept of cultural heritage preservation. This will prepare students for conservation training in higher education or career settings and also highlight the role of preservation and conservation in the larger arts and culture ecosystem. While there are other conservation toolkits and K-12 education models in existence, they are mostly designed to be used in a museum setting and designed for people who are familiar with cultural heritage, preservation, and conservation language and concepts.

This presentation will focus on one case study, the partnership between BACC and a 5th grade teacher at Freese Elementary in San Diego, CA. During the partnership, BACC discovered that the interest and demand for this type of curriculum and training exists within the education system, that there are vast funding avenues for this training, and that the work is strengthened by collaborating with professionals outside the field of conservation, capitalizing on their expertise and skills to engage new audiences. Through this program, BACC is investing long-term in our San Diego community, and we hope this is a model that can be replicated elsewhere.