Proactive Collaborative Conservation: Museums and companies working towards sustainability

Abstract

Purpose

This paper describes a system of collaboration between cultural institutions, conservation scientists and companies focussed on achieving global sustainability in museum and heritage sites through proactive conservation. The purpose of this paper is to propose the Proactive Collaborative Conservation (ProCoCo) as a viable tool to accomplish this objective.

Design/methodology/approach

The lack of degradation studies on contemporary materials, such as composites, was identified as an issue for the future of cultural heritage. Developing new approaches to heritage and conservation becomes vital and it is in this landscape that ProCoCo is inserted. A concise review of the literature is reported and the process that led to the development of ProCoCo is explained. Backcasting and forecasting were used to develop different parts of the approach.

Findings

ProCoCo consists in studying parameters of the new materials, manufactured by the commercial partner, then simulating the ageing and, finally, re-studying the same parameters in order to predict lifetime changes. During the case study, it was confirmed that such an approach helps in identifying weaknesses in the material, which can then become useful for conservators and manufacturers.

Practical implications

The approach allows conservation scientists and conservators to measure the conservation state of materials and to detect degradation at an early stage.

Originality/value

ProCoCo offers a different vision of the long-term issue of funding accessibility faced by museums and suggests a way of improving heritage global sustainability. It proposes a pragmatic and lasting solution to the insufficient public economic support in the arts which runs parallel to government aid.

Citation

Perzolla, V., Carr, C.M. and Westland, S. (2018), "Proactive Collaborative Conservation: Museums and companies working towards sustainability", Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 321-341. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCHMSD-01-2017-0002