A Fine Balance - approaches to teaching collection care to students within a university degree course

Collection care has always been an important part of conservation training but the focus has changed with the increasing proliferation of collections due to digital material, the welcome increase in the demand for access to collections, limited budgets and the different ways collections are being used and managed.

Within the two year MA Book and Paper Conservation degree course taught at Camberwell College of the Arts, University of the Arts London students are introduced to the skills and knowledge that are necessary to equip them for working as conservators. This has a broad remit. The teaching of bench skills is integrated into an understanding of collection care. There is a fine balance between teaching classical preventive conservation and teaching new complex tasks associated with the changing face of collection requirements. Many of these requirements relate broadly to communication content such as developing advocacy and negotiating skills under an array of circumstances and geographical locations. The value of developing hand skills is still imperative and has to be resilient to changing fashions within conservation. Hand skills have to be carefully embedded into an understanding of the changing dynamic of contemporary collection care. Case studies will be used to highlight these issues.

Author details:
Jocelyn Cuming
Course Leader
MA Conservation
Camberwell College of the Arts
University of the Arts London

Short Biography
Jocelyn Cuming has worked as a book conservator in Rome, Italy and New Zealand. A Winston Churchill Fellowship for study in Preservation Management at the Getty Conservation Institute, USA enhanced her knowledge in this field. It also built on previous experience, and qualifications in educational psychology. In 1997 she co-jointly formed the National Preservation Office in New Zealand which was a governmental advisory service for documentary heritage within cultural institutions and communities. She also established and taught preservation management within the Master of Information Studies at Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand. Working with the National Museum of Australia and Ausheritage she has taught conservation courses within Asia and the Pacific. Since 2007 Jocelyn Cuming has been teaching conservation at Camberwell College of the Arts, University of the Arts London. Recently she undertook a book survey for the Islamic Museum of Art, Doha, Qatar.

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