John Parker

Abstract:

Sustainability in any area of human endeavour requires the involvement of the wider population through education that actively engages people’s interest and ensures that goals are both clearly understood and achievable. In turn this requires partnerships between government, industry, educational establishments from schools to academia, but critically with the communications media, whose messages are often transmitted ‘under the radar’.
A second aspect is how to fully understand and ensure the preservation of technologies, to allow reconstruction, repair, innovation… This requires an in-depth understanding of how things work, accurate and comprehensive recording, and the forward transmission across the generations of practical skills.
In reality, as industries come and go, so critical knowledge can be lost or may have to be relearned. This is where the museum community and libraries play such an important role – their activities should target many operational levels. Information storage too needs to be in many different forms from the written word to dynamic, 3D images via the skills of master craftsmen that we label as experience or even muscle memory.
This talk will highlight what organisations like the International Commission on Glass and ICOM with their broad international perspective are able to offer, the role they have in shaping the future of glass in Society and some specific outcomes of the 2022 International Year of Glass.