So let's see, recording is already started. So I will open the six town select board meeting for Monday, March 7, 2022 to order. Greg, any agenda additions or changes from staff. Nothing from staff. Okay, anything from orders members. I just wanted to make one clarification, although the agenda says executive session at the bottom, there's no no anticipation of any executive session need there. So we will likely not do that. So, okay. Okay, so no changes. So let's move forward to public to be heard public to be heard as a time for residents to or those attending the meeting to bring up issues issues with the select that are not on the agenda. If you'd like to speak during public to be heard you can either raise your hand using the the raise your hand feature in zoom, or if you're on the phone, I will give you an opportunity to speak when we get to that point. So if you would like to address the board please be brief, please be civil, please refrain from using an appropriate language. Please address your remarks to me as a select board chair. Please do not attack other members of the public or town staff. And if you are not the recognized speaker, please keep yourself muted and leave off your, your camera to avoid unnecessary distraction. And let's move on. Okay, so I see David scoping has his hand up. David, go ahead. Yes, I just, it's just a reminder as we all know, we're in the middle of a climate crisis and one of the things I mentioned recently, the fact we're all in it together and I'm not doing anything that you're not doing so I am not up here. I'm saying that you've got to follow me. In fact, we have to work together. One of the things that the Energy Committee is working on is we would really like to find someone capable of of being a part of a new position which would be basically be someone skilled to help the community as at large lower its overall carbon footprint. And we, if we wait for the state or the federal government, we'll probably find that we've passed the last tipping point, and we're only halfway to the goal so I think communities are in a position to to step forward and I intend with my committee to keep working on this to to come back with you to come back to you. Hopefully, sooner rather than later, with some requests, etc, and suggestions so with that, I thank you very much for your time. And thank you. Take care. Yep, thank you, David. Okay, are there any other members of the public who wish to speak. See there's at least one participant who's on the phone. If you would like to speak go ahead. Okay, I don't see any other hands up to let's move on to the first item of business 5a consider approval of new name and signage at public works facility. Greg, who's going to cover this one. I'm going to turn it over to Aaron Martin. As many of you know, Dennis Lutz, who has been an absolute institution in Essex for the past 30 some odd years is retiring this summer, and will be a tremendous loss to Essex, but I will deserve retirement and rest for Dennis. I think about ways we can, we can honor him and show him some appreciation for all he has done for the community. And to that end, Aaron Martin and the public works crew have a proposal to talk to you. Aaron, you're muted. There we are. Hear me now. All right. So, if any of you know where our facility is located off of Sand Hill Road. I've been here 16 years I've never known why there wasn't a sign out front to note where we are located. That is something that has been coming a long time at least in my mind I want to get out there. I have talked with the fire chief we're going to coordinate any signage with him as well but I thought it'd be a wonderful opportunity to everything you see there. And everything at my office and our engineering staff. This this man has dedicated his, his whole career to this community. Mentoring all his staff mentoring mentoring myself. And I thought this was the least we could do for him to acknowledge our appreciation for him. Dedicating his career here so in your memo, you do have a layout of the sign would be looking at this may change. We will allow you will keep you up to date on what it's going to look like this was kind of the first draft to go around of it. And what to tonight here we're looking for the select board to approve the name change for our complex over there off of Sand Hill Road. All right there it is. All right, great. Thanks Aaron. Any select work member comments or questions. And someone that was here when Dennis first started. It's a no brainer as far as I'm concerned we should honor Dennis for office hard work over the 37 years. Thank you Don Patrick. Back to the same sentiments. Dennis has been an honor and a pleasure to work with you anytime I've had a question the reply has been immediate and oftentimes extensive I remember getting maps of sewer corridors. The first time I showed up at your office and to be honest it's stuck with me since it's been not just an honor to work with you but it's been an honor for our entire community to have had you giving so much of yourself for such a long period of time. Very lucky to have you. Thanks Patrick Sue. Yeah I mean everybody's already said but I think Dennis has had such a positive imprint on our on our community and I'm hoping that Aaron is ready to dust off his data as well because I love your data. Dennis I love the all the information that you share in such a clear concise way so we are going to miss you. And I think this is the least that we can do is, is put your name on something and hopefully brings a smile to your face when you, when you walk or drive by. Thanks to Tracy. Hi everybody else. Dennis you've always been very thorough very detail oriented you've always been willing to take the time to explain things to anybody who asks a question isn't in as a new board member last year. It's extremely helpful to have you take that extra step to explain in detail and anticipate questions that will come up. Whenever you have anything in the packet it's always thorough. It's always detailed and you are very appreciated. Thank you. Same same for me I absolutely totally totally appreciate the fact that Dennis you take every question I have seriously you you answer it you you are or you explain to me why my question isn't isn't relevant or appropriate. There's also on it wanted to mention that there was a time where we were worried about how long meetings were getting. And, and we started putting more and more stuff on a consent agenda, so that we didn't have to have a big long discussion. And I'm sitting there saying wait a minute we're not going to hear from Dennis tonight that's my favorite part of the meeting is to listen to Dennis talk because he always knows what's going on and he's got a good attitude about everything. And so I just wanted to share that that I felt cheated when we started moving some of your items to the consent agenda, because again I wanted to listen to you talk. Dennis. Oh you're muted Dennis. Dennis you're muted. I learned about this late last week and it was a complete surprise and I really do appreciate it. It's a real honor but at the same point. I have to say that it's shared by so many people because you know the information that I provide a lot of time comes from Aaron and comes from Dan who's going to be on and from any and other people on the staff. And our employees work really hard. You know we don't always get it right. It's really hard. When you have a large community like this to to really get it right. We try hard at that and that's one thing that I'm proud of. Thank you Dennis. It was beautiful. Okay anybody else have any other comments members of the public or other staff members. Irene. I don't have a lot to add congratulations. I'm glad you'll be with us for a few more months at least. Echoing everything the other selectman said for 12 years you taught me a whole lot about public works that I wouldn't know otherwise. I would just ask that the select were considered if we ever do move the public works facility and or improve it that we continue to name it after Dennis what's because right now it needs a lot of upgrades. And I want to make sure that as we upgrade it we don't forget all this wet and energy and years that Dennis put in. Thanks again. Thanks. Greg. It's too bad we have to have this conversation on zoom, not in person not not to track it all from things that have said but sometimes make it a little bit nicer to be said in person. And we do fully intend to have a ceremony at some point, once the sign is in and installed and get together in person and really give Dennis some of that recognition and order that he deserves face to face. Just wanted everybody to be aware that that is also what it was. Thank you. Margaret Smith. I've been trying to figure out how to say thank you for Dennis to Dennis and how much he will be missed. And I almost came and talked to him yesterday morning at the Jericho cafe where I was having breakfast with my son but I decided not to interrupt his, his conversations. My only comment as far as the sign is that I would love to see a slightly different font on Dennis's name. So that it was a little more apparent just just thinking about signage and graphic design. Anyway, so thank you thank you Dennis. Thank you Margaret. Any other comments. I don't see any other hands up. That's Margaret still. Okay, so I believe there is a motion. In the packet. Mr Chairman, I'd like to make the motion. Go ahead, Don make the motion that to select for to prove the new public work sign placement and dedication of the town of Essex public works facility to Dennis elutz. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second second. Thank you, Pat. Any further discussion. This is an awesome thing. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, motion passes five zero. Thank you everyone. Yes, wonderful. Okay, moving on to item five be considered one time waiver to purchasing policy for replacement of public works vehicle. So are we going to hear from Dennis. If you'd like you can hear from me as well. I'm going to try and man, he's more than welcome to issue before the select word tonight is whether to allow public works, a one time waiver of the town's purchasing policy to purchase a truck truck body and associate a plow equipment. By obtaining three qualified quotes versus the formal sealed bid process. Public works is in the process of replacing one of our trucks and have run into a few complications due to what's currently going on within the automotive industry. The first problem being, as you folks may have heard, getting parts pieces and components for these trucks and manufacturing plants ability to assemble these to meet the current demand is just not happening. We've also been till that takes a little bit longer time frame to get these larger trucks in because I have the retool set up and whatnot. Staff has been informed that lead time can be anywhere from six to 12 months for these larger trucks. And then you add on the plow equipment and the dump bodies. We're looking at an additional three to six months which puts us out nine months to over a year before we can actually take possession of the plow vehicle. The other issue involves the state of Vermont's fleet bidding process, which they have put on delay for undetermined, undetermined length of time. These dealerships have been given an allotment of vehicles from the manufacturers that they'll be receiving for remainder of this year and into next. And they're just not willing to commit to the state bid process which locks in prices for the state to purchase vehicles and municipalities to piggyback on that bid system. And that means that the town of Essex is going to be purchasing new vehicle at retail price, and we're going to have to wait this undetermined amount of time to take possession of the vehicle. Another concern with with using the purchasing policy as it is for the formal bidding process is the lead time. I mean that's key. We can't be down for a vehicle for very long. It's already we're already be pushing a year without this new vehicle.  It would allow us to solicit three quotes from qualified vendors for the truck chassis and for the truck body and associated plow equipment. And we can get this hopefully get this truck purchase now and get it going so we can get in the queue. So we're not waiting that extended period of time. As you see in your cost section of your memo. We've already solicited three quotes for the trucks. We've also received three quotes from the truck body vendors and the associated plow equipment that goes on these on this vehicle. We only received two quotes back with the lowest being 91800. And the staff's recommendation that if the select word allows to go to go forward with these purchases. So we can get our truck in the queue and get it get it get it built. Additionally, Charlie boys trucking local truck vendor here in town was asked if they would directly purchase our existing cloud truck rather than trading it into any of the other dealers and they seemed they seemed eager. They seemed like they would bite on that. And right now that the value of that vehicle as it sits is $45,000. So when you walk through all the math. Add and subtract. We're looking at a replacement vehicle in the amount of 109,050 dollars. Add in the warranty and multi-year service contract it's we're going to be in and around the $115,000 range. So I believe I provided all the numbers on those quotes we did receive and provided a recommendation to the board. I have Dan robert the highway superintendent here to address or answer any questions technical questions you may have. And it's like Dennis has his hands up I'm sure he wants to comment. Dennis. I just want to say that a lot of credit does go to Dan who's on Dan robert. This is a slightly different truck than what we've used before. It's been a truck that's basically known as a low pro and it's a great cloud truck. It's an intermediate, you know between a pickup and a larger truck. But it has its limitations, especially for multi use purposes. And Dan look carefully at this. I know he spent a good time, it was free time over the last couple months, you know, looking into various options and this is actually a truck that will be a little bit different than the low pro. And it will provide us with the capability to not only put an in body sander basically slide it in, as opposed to a dump truck body that holds the salt directly, but also allows us to interchange that with other units. So if we have to put chloride down in the back roads and put a tank on the back or do other things. It's a much more flexible vehicle that still has the same capability as the low pro so it's. I wanted to mention that because that's a great credit credit to Dan. He's on and we wouldn't be here asking for this if he hadn't really done all his homework to try to come up with the best possible truck for the crew and he's, he's done it from the beginning, falling to now being the superintendent so he knows your equipment really well. And you can answer any questions you have as far as the vehicle or why the route we're going is what we're choosing. Thank you. Dennis. Okay, any board member questions. Sue. Yeah, so I don't really have a question on the request for the waiver but I do just have a question on the bids for the truck bodies with the plow equipment, there were two bids that came in and it looks like you guys selected the lower cost one from Viking. Let me say the seas at 91 eight like Aaron mentioned the, the, the second one which is a little bit higher has a higher max capacity. And I was wondering, is there, you know, is that 10,500 max capacity of the lower price to one adequate or are we, you know, being a penny, whatever the expression is. You know, it is there a reason that we would need that 16,000 pound max capacity of the one that costs a little bit more. We have that Mr robert's address that if he's, if he's able. Yeah, Aaron, I got it. If we get into the higher weight rating that will tend to put CDL drivers in it versus like summer help or individuals that we hire that don't have their CDL yet. It just puts a higher truck capacity on it and puts it outside of the weight range for whether it be a CDL driver or not. So it sounds like there's actually benefits with going with the, the one that has the lower capacity. Correct. And I, I hate to see us put too much weight on it and then not intentionally but accidentally overload it more than it should be. So I think the lower weight rating is, is safer for everybody. All right, that's awesome. I bigger isn't always better. So I appreciate that. All right, thanks, Don. I must have answered it. Thanks. Okay. All right, any other board member questions. See any hands up any questions from the public. Don't see any hands up so somebody have the motion handy. Patrick. I believe I do. I'll motion the select board grant public works a one time waiver to the purchasing policy to purchase the truck and body as noted in this memorandum due to the availability of trucks in the market and the timeline of possessing the truck before next winter season. Truck. Thank you. Thank you. Tracy for the second. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed. Okay, motion passes five zero. Thanks guys. Thank you. Good work on that. All right. Okay, then the next business item is discussion and possible action on town of Essex rule requiring wearing face coverings indoors and public spaces. At our last meeting, we discussed, well, the current situation is that the, the Essex mask rule is in effect until March 22. But at our last meeting we discussed the possibility every discussed, establishing a criteria for lifting the mask rule as there's some some indication that that the current case numbers and so forth are declining and we wanted to we were looking at using the CDC guidance and we had discussed the possibility of having the five days in a row of being in the moderate community transmission range on the CDC's website. Two days later the CDC changed their criteria and since then and I actually can't say I shouldn't say since then but we're currently in the medium category. I have not I can't say that I have looked every day to see where we were and unfortunately the CDC's website no longer shows a timeline trend of of where you know what the the classification is. So, I don't think we have unless you know I we didn't ask anybody to go start taking screenshots of every every day with with dates and stuff so we improve that we're actually we're in that range but we have that discussion. Other things that have happened since our last meeting, the school district, the Essex Westford school district has gone to masks optional starting today. Just anecdotally my wife's a teacher she said that about 80% of kids are still wearing masks, just an anecdotal aside there. The other thing that has happened is the state of Vermont has said that they will change their recommendation around surrounding indoor masking on March 14. I think I've gotten all that right. So, I guess, given that is the question before us maybe. How do we react to this change in the CDC's criteria. We were what we want to and and also the information from the other entities, both locally and statewide. Where do we want to go. Any select board member comments on that. Who's going to be first that that go ahead. I always like going first. You know was obviously the timing was maybe not unfortunate but definitely having it changed so quickly after our last meeting. You're taking a look at the why the CDC change their recommendations, you know, taking into account the less severe nature of the more dominant strain of the virus, and their decision to include hospital capacity to also reflect how this variant is less severe. You know obviously put us right into that medium category that I think all of us. Certainly I felt comfortable with saying if we were in for a period of time, then we should drop the mass recommendation. I am not a fan of moving goalposts. In this case, it feels like the field has changed, but I still think that the intent behind our recommendation previous to this remains the same. Which is, if we feel that our community is in kind of what the CDC would consider a medium range of, you know, can the community handle this can the hospitals handle it. It looks like we're there. So I'm amenable to dropping our mask mandate. If we feel that we want to give people a few days to sort of move into it. I'm also would certainly entertain, you know, having a few day lead up. Love to hear the other board my recommendations but that's kind of where I'm sitting with it right now. Thanks Patrick Tracy. I echo everything that Pat said, I will take responsibility for including the immediate enactment of the masking requirement. I don't think that that was prudent. We should have communicated out to the business community. I haven't yet come to a decision whether we should give a couple days to speak with the businesses directly reach out to them. I get a hold of the economic development commission to use their contacts, or whether, you know, if we rescind it tonight that that it just be immediate. I would look to other board members for their thoughts on that. I'm not sure that it's as important to reach out if we're ending it as it was to enact it. But those are, that's where I'm at. Thanks Tracy. Yeah, so I mean we're in a little bit of a weird situation because the original metrics are still showing that we're high. And I get that there's this pivot that's occurred.  So I guess I, I would lean towards adopting the new metrics that have come out from the CDC as our guidance and based on that. You know, it's basically saying that not everyone needs to wear a mask right that only people that are. It's a little bit odd because it puts the responsibility on the people that have the biggest possibility of having, you know, a severe illness, which is, it almost feels a little backwards but you know, without, you know, we would admit we're not the scientists, we're not the medical community. We're, we're looking for guidance and this is the guidance that we have at this point. So I would lean towards following the new criteria and based on the new criteria. It appears that it doesn't make sense for everyone to be required to wear a mask. Any thoughts on timing. I would think we roll it back with some sort of, we roll it back, you know, effective tomorrow with some sort of messaging that is that every business obviously has their own right to manage it however they want to manage, right. So, you know, even though there's not something coming from at the municipal level of a retailer or business owner wants to retain having a mask requirement that's their prerogative right so I think we want to just reinforce that we're, you know, we're, we're, we would, if we, if we choose we are lifting it for the overall municipality but there's no reason that it can't be continued internally at a, at a business. Thanks to Don any comments. Just thinking. I agree with what everyone has said about following the CDC guidelines. But I'd like to see maybe a compromise as we had proposed the 21st in the state is saying I'd rather see us go with the state on the 14th. That gives people time to prepare for our changing our decisions. I'd like to hear from the public, because there's a lot of them here tonight and I'm assuming that's what they're here for so. So is your hand backup. Yeah, I just had another question so we had it when we set the criteria at our last meeting, we indicated that it had to be at a certain level for a sustained five days, given that we don't have the data to, to really back up the data we have been at that medium level for five days. I mean, I think we could make assumptions but we don't, we haven't tracked it for five days. Does it make sense to ensure that we do reach that that five day and maybe that aligns better with what Don is suggesting which is the 14th which is next Monday right. Right. Yeah, and there was an important point that you made to that that businesses still have will still have the right to maintain their own safety policies as will the town, I mean the the mask mandate for municipal buildings is in the preview of the town manager. And is not it wasn't the this mask rule being put in place that that caused the requirement for masking in the in municipal buildings and I see Greg has his hand up and let him let him talk in a minute here but I just wanted to I mean I want to make it clear. We do we should we will we do need to make it clear that we are not prohibiting anyone from having their own mask rule or their own safety rules. We're just lifting the. We would just be if we do it, lifting the requirement imposed by the town, any business can still maintain whatever safety requirements they want. Greg, do you want to comment. Yeah, thank you. As far as the tracking it for five days. Unfortunately, I think that's going to be hard to do with what the CDC has set up right now. As Andy mentioned, there's no day to day timeline. I'm going to pull it up right now the last update, either May, March 3 or March 5. There's two dates on there. But either way, it doesn't seem to be updated every single day so it's not even as if you can go on and track it every day. So just letting you know that as you weigh the decision about to move forward and as far as making that decision based on length of time. Thanks, Greg. Okay, so I will move on to the public any comments from the public. Michael Dimitrov. Yeah, I would, I would advocate for dropping the mask mandate as soon as possible. I just think it's time, you know, I was supportive of all this stuff up until recently, but we're pushing two years. And, you know, as someone else mentioned the Omicron variant, you know, as is I think the tendency with these viruses it's less, less virulent, and I just think it's enough to get back to normal or whatever the new normal is. So, I would advocate for dropping the mask mandate as soon as possible. Thank you, Michael. David's coping. I certainly would not ever expect that we would have a situation where some people were required to mask and some some people were not. So if you were going to drop it, you would drop it for everyone because walking into the grocery store and seeing half people masked and half people on masks is it doesn't flip my boat so you know, with dropping it for everyone if you're going to drop it at all. So we can't prohibit anybody from wearing a mask. My, my, my mother is currently in hospice care and I will continue to wear a mask when I'm out in public. Oh, absolutely.  I mean, if I want to wear mine for the next five years just hide my face in the public. I certainly have the right to do that.  Thanks, David. You, mangas. I just wanted to say that I think it's time to get back to personal choice and to drop the mandate and let the people that want to mask continually mask that's that's fine. But I think we're at the point now where this has just gone on long enough, and it just needs to be brought back to the point of personal choice. Thank you. You. Any other comments. I don't see any other. I'm on the phone line. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. I also agree with everybody that I think the time kind of it's coming to make it at least mask optional. I feel like the people that are going to wear them are going to continue where I'm from here, which I feel like we should have the option. I appreciate you listening and so thank you. All right, thank you. Irene runner. So I related I'm okay with you ditching the mask mandate or keeping it for a little while longer but what I really want to do is get back into the building for meetings and I don't remember the select works. I don't want to shut people out of meetings and only hold them remotely but maybe you can refresh by memory. But my preference would be that you open up town hall and let us come master unmasked or required masks or whatever to meetings in person because the energy is totally different in the room and it is your own thing. Thanks. Yep, we are we're having that we are having that discussion and we should, we will, we should have that people will have talked publicly about it after we decide what we're going to do here, what we're going to do there. So, okay, thank you. Okay, anyone else don't see any other hands if you're on the phone go ahead and speak up. Okay, I don't see any other hands up. Sue. I was just going to make the motion if that's okay. Okay. Well, do we do we I think we need to still resolve the question of timing right. So what do you know I guess I guess I'll go ahead and start as I'm, I'm, I don't want to put us in a situation where anybody feels like they have a conflict with regard to you know, oh the select board dropped this last night and we're going to a business and saying, well, the business owner not knowing that it's okay for you know, that I don't know what kind of conflicts, but it could arise and I think there's some reasonableness to aligning it with the state. Saying that it would, you know be on the 14th that the guidance would change to allow us time to have that communication. What do others think. I saw Sue nodding her head. Yeah, I agree with that. Anybody. Tracy. Yeah, you know, Andy just pointed something out that leads me to the 14th. I don't want anyone to go into a business and have a put a business owner in that situation where they think it's still in place. The resident or the customer knows about this meeting and something happens or you know, I don't think it's fair to two business owners or employees to be put into that position so I'm, I'm fine with the 14th. Thanks Tracy. Pat or Don, any comments on timing. I agree with what's been said. 14th is my idea so I'm good with them. Alrighty. Alrighty. All right, so you want to have a go with the motion with the date included. Yep, I will. So, I make a motion that the select board lift the town of Essex rule requiring wearing face coverings indoors in public spaces. Effective March 14 2022. Thanks to have a second. Second. Thank you Don. Any further discussion. Greg, any concerns with how that's been worded. I think that's fine. All right, great. Okay. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay, motion passes five zero. We will lift the last main date effective week from today. Okay, thank you. Moving on to consent agenda. I will go ahead and move approval of the consent agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed. Okay. Motion passes five zero reading file. Any board member comments? You know what we didn't. Yeah, right now. Right. Go ahead. I see your hand. Go ahead. I just wanted to say thank you to staff for putting together the post. I think it's very helpful. Great feedback. And I, it's something that I really hope will continue into the future. Okay. Thanks, Tracy. I wanted to thank the ethics police department and the ethics community justice center for the wonderful presentation they did on Saturday. I'm sorry. So many people missed it. Hopefully they'll redo it. It was wonderful. It was informative and it was extremely interactive. So I do appreciate all the effort that went into it. Oh, yeah, that was the know your rights thing. It was. Yeah, yeah, I wish I could have made that that. Yeah, that sounded really great. Pat. One more. Thank you both. Actually, I guess it's two to our voters and to our town staff for passing the budget, keeping us going another year. And for all of our staff, Greg, you know, in the midst of a lot of change, it was a pretty heroic lift to get everything together with you. Our compliments to Courtney, all the heads of the departments as well. Just please let them know that the work was appreciated. Thank you. I'd be happy to absolutely. Yep. That was, that was great stuff. And then the other thing that I know Greg had sent out. And email asking about. Meetings going forward, whether we wanted to. Start meeting in person again. And the intent of the, I'm just going to be transparent here that the intent was for scheduling purposes. So it wasn't an illegal email of communications. It was about scheduling. And so. I think most of the responses were yes, we want to be in person. Because of the, the energy, the connection with, with people in the room and so forth. So is anybody, anybody have any concerns with doing that? I know Greg, you mentioned that you, that for now you'd prefer continuation of masking. We're going to be talking about that as a management team tomorrow taking the select boards decisions night into consideration. And so I'll have more on that. As some of you have said, it'll be personal decision and certainly if anybody prefers to wear a mask and meet in person, that is absolutely completely okay. And also if anyone's prefers to attend remotely, we will still have that hybrid setup. Yeah, yeah, there is no, there is no, no intent to write force anybody to come to the meeting if all board members, if you'd like to, you know, as, as we've been before, if you'd like to not attend in person, that's fine. There was a question, I guess I got an email today, someone asking whether we were going to continue allowing the public to participate remotely. And I think that's an absolute, that we'll be doing that as well. So the, the amount of participation we get, you know, so there's 31 people in the meeting right now, we've, if we had that every, every meeting in the, in the meeting room, we'd be having to build a new meeting room. Because that's, that'd be kind of crowded and you know, some other meetings get much larger than that. So, yeah, we definitely will continue with the remote access for both members or board members and for, and for the public. So I think the consensus is the meeting scheduled for two weeks from tonight, if you're, if you're so inclined, you may intend to attend in person, both to the board and to the public. So, all right, thank you for that. Any other board member comments? Okay, we're, we're coming in under an hour here. I think this is potentially a record. Or we could just hang out. Anybody want to make a motion? I make the motion we adjourn. Thank you, Don. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Sue. It was non-debatable motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed. Thank you, everyone.


What an absolutely beautiful country we live in. The Variety Trillion Bash 2016 is heading from the north to the south islands and here we are going into the Marlborough sounds on our way to Picton and in Blenheim tonight. Variety is all about making a difference to the lives of disadvantaged children real and tangible difference and the Variety Bash well these are the people and the vehicles that go around raising money then distributing grants to community organizations to individuals to families who need assistance and Variety will make that difference. It's made out of a whole bunch of people, the bashes and the teams. Let's meet one of those teams, Mark writes with them. Thanks Simon, I'm here with Morris from the Best Start Fire Truck. Morris, what motivated you to become involved in the Variety Bash in the first place? It actually allows us to get to the coal face and make a positive difference in Kiwi kids' lives. We're amongst it every day when we're bashing and it's fantastic. And Best Start is a principle sponsor, how do they fit in? Basically Best Start have got 260 childcare centres across New Zealand. They've got really good strong core principles and they want to make a positive difference in lives of our Kiwi kids. We got involved and we've never looked back. I mean they're such a team of passionate committed volunteers and we're both after the best for children. I saw a bike given out last year and it just made such a huge difference to the child that it was given to. When we travel centres and you see the smiles on children's faces as the fire track comes into view, it makes it all worthwhile. So there you have it, the Best Start team making a great start at making a difference in the lives of New Zealand's children.


But anyway, I guess I had a comment on The timing chain on this ecotech engine, sorry, it's dark out here It's like 2 30 in the morning or something, but I had to do this because I was told by this gentleman that I Mean after I do this I buy the parts I go to the Chevy dealership and everything and get the parts for this 2.2 ecotech engine he informs me that He flat out says by the way you don't have Or you have a 2.4 ecotech and I guess that he's saying that's the only thing that ecotechs is Ecotech makes is a 2.4, but I'm gonna try to zoom in here on this As soon as it Focuses If I can get this for you Trying to do this at 2 30 at night Well, and I guess right there Can you see how YouTube? If I hold it straight Right there 2.2 liter That doesn't say 2.4 It's a 2.2 Ecotech engine. I'm a Chevy guy. I know my engines right there. It says 2.2 right there 2.2 liter not a 2.4. They do make a 2.4. They're usually in the two doors the sports This is just a plane Jane Right there the 2.2 liter And it is an ecotech engine Now I don't want to sound like an ass, but I do not like to be told What kind of engine I have in my automobile because I know I've had this engine for a part I bought the parts at a Chevy dealership For a 2.2 not a 2.4 right there the sticker says it on the hood it is a 2.2 liter I just don't like people telling me what I have and what I don't have in my vehicles I know I'm a Chevy guy. I've been a Chevy guy for many years I've got 34 years experience working on these things and I just don't I don't like that I mean by the way you have a 2.4. No, I don't it's a 2.2 That's exactly what this car is So just a little rant so I'm sorry to the gentleman that thought I had a 2.4 But I have a 2.2 Right there. I just proved it. I you know people Should when they make these accusations should have to prove instead of me Proving myself right there cobalt LS That is a Chevy cobalt So there you go So anyway, sorry about the little rant once again, but I'm not gonna be told what kind of engine I have in my car Especially in the Chevy because I know So but YouTube Thanks to all my subscribers and everybody Have a good one


Tanzania's president, Samir Saluhu Hassan, has appeared for the first time at a public event in the East African nation, wearing a face mask. Her predecessor, John Maga Fully, who died in match, had always refused to wear one and was considered a coronavirus sceptic. Samir has worn face masks outside of Tanzania, most notably this week, on her two-day state visit to neighbouring Kenya. At the event in Darisa Lam on Friday, she was addressing an audience of more than 800 elders from across the country. During her visit to Kenya, she made a light-hearted comment about wearing masks, comparing it to a herder mustling a goat to stop it from eating its crops.


I just thought what a great idea, because a lot of us hadn't had the chance to affirm our citizenship that way, and so we were really excited to have the opportunity to say those really important words about Australia and to have those special feelings and to make it something that was really memorable. And whose laws I uphold and obey. And whose laws I uphold and obey. Fantastic. Well done. When I was saying the affirmation, it made me feel really proud about being Australian. It made me feel, it made me remember like how lucky we are to live in Australia because other countries don't have what we have. Organising the affirmation ceremony was really easy. We had the cards, the children read off them. We made it our own by having a 5C. I think the children really enjoyed it, they, the ones who hadn't had a chance to have that citizenship ceremony for themselves, that made it something that they could remember. And to be able to say the affirmation and to take home the card and to remember that, I think that they'll really remember that as something really special that happened today.


Can we start? Yeah? Could you please? Hello? Hi again. I'd like to introduce you to our next speaker, Nick Wilson. Nick Wilson is senior lecturer in culture, media and creative industries at King's College in London. I actually got to know Nick not long ago. One year or two years ago we started a corresponding as I was actually wondering about whether I could do a PhD there at King's College. So we started corresponding. I found out about his work on social creativity and real authenticity. And these are topics that have been coming up over and again when discussing with our organizational group about Innovate Heritage and the connections between arts and heritage, tangential points differences. So we're very happy that Nick Wilson has agreed and is here with us today. I'll come up, Nick, and his title, Real Enchanting Arts and Heritage through Social Creativity. We're very much looking forward to you later. Thank you very much indeed, everybody. Thank you, Catarina and all the organizers. It's such a pleasure to be here in Berlin. It's also such a pleasure that I've been able to bring the sun with me. As you know, it rains every day in London. I'm sure many of you would rather be outside. We've had three fascinating talks. I'm the fourth. I hope I'm going to give you some due course to think that you're grateful for staying indoors. Ich hatte das Vergnügen das Studium hier in Berlin in der Führer 1990er Jahre, und es ist eine wahre Freude für mich heute um zurückzukehren. There we are. I just so wanted to say something in German because I, well, thank you very much. Yes, because I've been, as you're here, I actually studied here in Berlin some time ago. I had lousy German then. It's still very lousy, but I just wanted to prove to myself that I could say something of Deutsch. So there we are. It's a real pleasure to be here. My subject, reenchancing arts and heritage through social creativity. We are all now familiar with such terms as the creative and the cultural industries, the creative class and the creative economy. Our everyday discourse has been shaped by the relentless drive towards commercializing creativity. In the United Kingdom, what used to be referred as the Department of Heritage is now the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the DCMS, popularizing the troublesome term or the term culture in the process, but also leaving us in some lingering doubt as to where exactly art or the arts and heritage reside in the public consciousness. Have the arts and heritage become sidelined, now playing second fiddle to the wider and much more muscular creative industries? What exactly is the relationship between the arts and heritage today? Is this how it should be? Could it? Should it be otherwise? There are no doubt many questions. The questions that we are referring to and trying to provide answers to in the conference over the next three days. And I'm sure this will provide a really fascinating place, a place space for conversations between arts and heritage. So what a great idea, first of all, providing a critical platform for uniting artists and scholars and heritage and arts professionals and a forum for enhancing collaboration. But of course, such an agenda should not itself be free from critical inquiry. We need to ensure that our starting point for these conversations embraces an attitude of openness, tolerance and inclusion. And there is always a danger of lurking self-interest, of only having conversations about things we agree on or perhaps of only engaging with those we can readily legitimize as artists or heritage experts. To the extent that I seek to raise some critical issues in this keynote talk, I do so very much aware of the fact that I am in the presence of artists and heritage experts who can rightly claim much more knowledge and experience of their domain than I can. So to invoke a colloquialism that rather appropriately has its origins in artistic practice that is no longer part of our shared heritage, I'm not teaching grandmother how to suck eggs. In this paper, I will seek to address three problem areas or challenges that I perceive particularly relevant to innovate heritage. And in doing so, I hope to be able to introduce some insights from my own research, my artistic practice and my heritage. I will be drawing on my study of the British early music movement, which is recently culminated in a book which has the title and I'm thinking here of Shaheen saying titles matter. It has the title The Art of Reenchantment, Making Early Music in the Modern Age. I'll also be making reference to a current action research project I've been embarking on with two artists colleagues of mine with links to the Battersea Arts Centre in London and this is titled 53 Million Artists. But perhaps most of all, it will just or perhaps I mean chiefly be as a human being that I consider myself best qualified to provide some critical reflections on my subject. So the first problem that I will be raising stems directly from the title of this event, Innovate Heritage. No doubt chosen to encourage a variety of different positions or related questions. I want to interrogate a little more deeply the relationship between innovation and heritage. To begin with, it might be worth casting a critical eye over the very idea of innovation itself and my approach to exploring this area will focus on some insights from my study of early music as I've said, a particularly rich context I think for exploring the relationship between our cultural heritage and the practice of doing art today. The second challenge concerns the question of whose heritage or heritage for whom. This it seems to me is a particularly challenging question, a prescient issue that needs careful scrutiny. And here I should be drawing heavily on ideas and issues raised by the much acclaimed cultural theorist Stuart Hall who as I'm sure many of you are aware died earlier this year. And in particular I should be looking at the paper he wrote 15 years ago for the conference whose heritage titled Unsettling the Heritage Reimagining the Post-Nation. In the process we come to my third challenge which addresses what is perhaps the elephant in the room which is why do we need to innovate heritage? What for and why now? This will allow me to introduce some ideas I've been working on currently as I say with 53 million artists. I'll also be saying something about re-enchantment and social creativity, two ideas that have featured prominently in my recent work on which I think could have a positive bearing on our conversations over the next few days. So, innovate heritage. Is this an exhortation to innovate heritage or perhaps a challenge to explore the obvious and not so obvious tensions that exist between innovation and heritage? Both maybe. In reflecting further as I was putting together this paper I came across the picture Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse painted in 1903. Not sure if you can make this out at all on the screen. The picture evokes the story of Ovid's metamorphosis book number three in which Echo falls in love with Narcissus but he rejects her falling under the spell of his own reflection which he catches sight of in the nearby spring waters. Echo is spirited away destined only to ever repeat the last words that she hears. Narcissus captivated by the image of beauty he has seen falls in love with all the things for which he himself is admired and he wastes away. And it struck me that this offered a modern-day allegorical tale that could perhaps be applied to our two main protagonists arts and heritage.  How outward looking are the arts really? How open are they to innovation really? Then we have heritage which like Echo is at this conference at least seeking a rapprochement with art. So here the question is will heritage remain confined to providing just an Echo of history bound to preserve things exactly as they were or is the scope for innovation in heritage and innovation through heritage. To what extent are the arts and heritage bound to repeat the story of Narcissus and Echo or in the spirit of Ovid's metamorphosis actually to introduce change. Now rather like creativity and entrepreneurship innovation has become something of a buzzword that carries with it the cachet of the right stuff. We like innovation we all want innovation. We feel that innovation is a good thing but perhaps we don't question very often what kind of innovation or at what expense. In my view this is a problem in fact you could say this is the problem of capitalism. A dominant system of economic production is a relentless accumulator of pretty much everything it reaches of money profits products but also of waste debt inequality and yes innovation. The system works by innovating to be clear I take innovation to be the successful exploitation of the new idea in contradiction to creativity which is the generation of a new idea. So the outside of this conference it might be good to pause and reflect on what successful exploitation actually means in the context of arts and heritage. At the very least I will be saying more about whose interests are being served in a moment but for now let me turn to the other central debating point with regard to innovate heritage which is the question of how one might actually do this or indeed whether or not one can do this at all. After all to the extent that heritage is about preserving and presenting culture and the arts from the past one is challenged at the very least to question the extent to which heritage is malleable enough in order to be innovated and of course there's a delicious tension here which characterizes the ongoing dynamic between culture and creativity lived out by all of us every day. Simply by putting the word innovate before heritage we are challenged to take what heritage to challenge sorry we are challenging what we take heritage to be and this of course is no bad thing not surprisingly the concept of heritage is itself an area of contestation there is no universally agreed definition and our conception of heritage has changed over time and space. Broadly speaking heritage is understood as something inherited from the past our cultural heritage is often described in terms of the legacy of artifacts and attributes of a group or society that are inherited from previous generations maintained in the present and bestowed for the future benefit of those who come after us. What exactly gets preserved of course encompasses an increasingly diverse range of tangible intangible and even natural things as we've been hearing about in the previous talks. Here it might be useful to provide a very brief potted history albeit from a British perspective of the major developments in our thinking about heritage over the last 30 years or so. In the late 1980s English academic Robert Hewison drew attention to the sense in which heritage is not just about the past but necessarily mirrors or refracts present day concerns he coined the term the heritage industry to describe what he considered to be the sanitization and commercialization of the version of the past produced as the heritage in the UK. Heritage was a structure largely imposed from above to capture a middle-class nostalgia for the past within the context of a climate of decline. In what Wright goes on to describe as the museumification of the UK such nostalgia could overly romanticize the past reimagining history as some kind of utopian alternative to the problems of the present and very often don't we feel that we would like to have alternatives to the problems of the present. Of course heritage can be reassuring in the sense that it implies continuity between past and present which can be presented as an ordered sequence of events and meanings out of chaos. For Hewison in the face of apparent decline and disintegration it's not surprising that the past seems a better place yet it is irrecoverable for we are condemned to live perpetually in the present. What matters is not the past but our relationship with it Hewison says and he reminds us that the relationship between innovation and heritage is actually built on dialogue between present and past. The danger is always that heritage gets enclosed in a bell jar into which no ideas can enter and just as crucially from which none can escape. Writing in the early 1990s John Urie and Kevin Walsh brought the focus more squarely onto the everyday consumer of culture. So Urie noted much of the early conservation movement was plebeian in character for example railway preservation industrial archaeology steam traction railways and the like in the 1960s well before the more obvious indicators of economic decline that materialized in Britain. The gradual democratization of heritage is here coupled with the rising cultural relativism associated with the growing de-centering of the west and Eurocentric grand narratives and increasingly we see the balance of the critique of heritage shifting away from whether or not heritage was so to speak good history to the realization that heritage was to a large extent co-created by its consumers and the emphasis on the social process is a topic picked up on by Raphael Samuel and his book theaters of memory in 1994. Here Samuel also draws attention to the fact that preservation even if it's intended to do so more than stabilize necessarily involves a whole series of innovations. What may well begin as a rescue operation designed to preserve the relics of the past passes by degree into a work of restoration in which new environment has to be fabricated in order to turn fragments into a meaningful whole and I should be returning to this theme a little shortly in the context of my discussion of early music and so we're brought more or less up to date with Laura Jane Smith's intervention the uses of heritage in 2006 which begins there is really no such thing as heritage by this of course she means that heritage is not a thing but an inherently political and discordant practice that performs the cultural work of the present and I dare say most practitioners would now share a view that heritage value is not intrinsic value is something that is attributed to an object place or practice by particular people at a particular time for particular reasons in short heritage is a social construction that is based on and which gives rise to power relations within particular particular fields of knowledge so far so good but is it really as clear cut as this in my view no it isn't I think there's a danger here of succumbing to a particular reading of heritage that places all the power all the legitimacy in the hands of those doing the valuing and this of course is precisely the same problem that afflicts our present day treatment of creativity where there is a split between our theory and our practice to the extent that we can all agree that creativity is about novelty and it's about value the challenge in practice comes in agreeing what is or isn't valuable we'll have different opinions creativity gets reduced to the recognition of value which again is usually a process carried out by the legitimized few in other words people in power or with power of some kind so in order to avoid some irrealist implications of this particular view of heritage we need to adopt a position that can also take account of the concretely situated geohistorically specific differentiated stratified and emergent nature of human being I think that's my sentence with the most number of longest bigger words that I'm going to use but nonetheless it was good on paper whether it comes across so well forgive me anyway I have to say a word about philosophy in short my position on heritage as pretty much everything else adopts what critical realists refer to as a holy trinity of this metathoretical perspective namely ontological realism the world exists independently of our observations of it implying that there may be causal powers associated with heritage that are not socially constructed epistemological relativism we come with competing but equally legitimate positions with respect to our knowledge of the world around us implying that heritage is valued differently by different people depending on their particular vantage points and that's true of each of you and all of us and everybody and judgmental rationality the third of the three there are better and worse grounds for our beliefs as to what is or isn't considered representative of heritage and I realize I really do realize that what I've just said strays headlong into the domain of philosophy and raises some quite big challenging assertions that I don't have space to defend in this place today however by turning to the empirical case of early music performance I hope to be able to make my position a little clearer and in the process shed some further light on the complex nature of the relationship between innovation and heritage my personal interest in early music or historically informed performance otherwise known as hip is very much a personal one having formally worked as a performer professional singer with many of the early music groups that have gone on to become household names I'm thinking well whether they're household names they're well known let's say the academy of ancient music the English concert talis scholars orchestre of the age of enlightenment if you've heard of those sorts of orchestras and ensembles they're the ones I've performed and worked with in the past and indeed my singing career um takes me back 24 years to when I studied at the Hosschula der Kunstwerber, Hadeckar here in Berlin and I've only been back to this amazing city once since so it's really as I say it's just so nostalgic for me to come back still with my poor German never mind um yeah this is this is a kind of slightly autobiographical moment I'm coming off the paper you'll be pleased to know here believe it or not this is me singing Monteverdi's Orfeo wonderful opera he sings that wonderful aria pocenta spirito in the middle of the um the performance you just by the way you just experienced heritage in the sense that was Monteverdi but it was also me 24 years on trying to sing a bit of Monteverdi even in those days I had a bit of existential angst about how Monteverdi would have wanted it to sound the problem here therefore of heritage in art coming together um and I really have never shown this picture to anybody and I'm I blushed to do so but actually this this was a performance I gave somewhere near here in 1994 of an opera called La Spinelba by a Portuguese composer de Almeida I put at the top their ancient history and I think I think I'm making the point in this slide that some heritage is best forgotten anyway um so this is um a subject that I've been looking at in some detail and I've published a book called as I said before the art of re-enchantment making um early music in the modern age so I've been studying and trying to understand this context this amazing context of actually performing old music today where heritage and art absolutely comes together in the in the act of performance if you like just to give you a flavour I've got on this slide if we can cue the the audio I've got on this slide um David Monroe you may have heard of he's one of the key proponents in the 1970s of historically informed performance if we can hear a little bit of him playing anyway the crusaders managed to capture some of these strange new instruments and brought them back home to europe where they remained in use for over 500 years they're still out of doors of course it's quite a jazzy instrument okay I wanted to play you that clip partly because David Monroe is the kind of icon of early music and I'm referring to something which you might consider to be very british in terms of the early music movement but just just feel the energy feel the performance but also get a feel for the sense in which that music with it you know with it it's italian background it crosses boundaries it crosses borders think I'm you know many many of us in this room come from many different parts of the world and that music has influences from many different parts of the world and I suppose that for me is something which I think is extremely important when otherwise we might put music into categories and bracket it off as oh it's this or it's that so part of the deal is seeing that kind of perspective now as a performer and in my subsequent work researching the british early music movement I myself have been forced to confront the difficult issue which faces us when art meets heritage in practice how to reconcile the old with the new as a musician this requires managing the tensions that exist between following the requirements of any score of the composition we're going to perform the so-called text and performing musically in the here and now the act throughout the 1980s and into the early 1990s just at the time that the debates over heritage I've just discussed were developing Richard Taruskin and other musicologists were asking increasingly critical questions of the historical performance practice movement for Taruskin the idea that one could perform 17th or 18th century music authentically in keeping with the intentions of the composer or sounds of original performances was intellectually flawed we could never know composers intentions the so-called intentional fallacy and even if we could we could never hear music as they did since we live in a different time and we've been exposed to all the musical styles and genres that we have in the intervening two to three hundred years we've heard Strauss, Bach, Beethoven, Lady Gaga, whoever we've heard all of jazz we've heard so many different sounds we have our ears on differently as one composer put it to me. Taruskin laments the museum-like culture of hip's preservation of old music suggesting that this is the very antithesis of what performing music is actually all about on this point at least it would appear that hip's ideology is completely at odds with any notion of innovation at the same time however Taruskin draws attention to how hip historically informed performance in practice has been a decidedly modernist movement in which those involved have created a sound world that they wanted to hear for themselves and this is very often had very little to do with any authentic account of the musical heritage they are purporting to be upholding and on this point by contrast hip has been a decidedly innovative project again it would take me well beyond the confines of this paper to talk more about this sort of argument however given our focus on innovation and heritage I'd like to share with you one particular argument I've put forward in my book which is an effect to rationale for historically informed performance in the first place. I begin by arguing for the ontological epistemological there are those words again and logical priority of the possible or the potential over the actual or realized so think of possible and potential over actual and realized for the musician this means asking questions about what must have been possible to perform a musical work in their time and place rather than what were the actual conditions of any first performance what the piece sounded like or what the composer's intentions actually were this is historical dispositional authenticity which holds that music's inherent meaning and value is always dependent upon though not reducible to the compositional act in other words it's not simply down to our present day assessment of value the musical work exists how might this be relevant to innovate heritage we might ask well we can see how this in this particular case the practice of performing according to the principles of hip have in effect become a creative constraint that allows performers to innovate heritage but precisely through a process that reconciles art and heritage new and old act and text and so on the idea of reconciling the apparently irreconcilable is extremely important and I will turn to it at the end of the paper for now however we need to move on to explore the second of my problem areas whose heritage I have already alluded to my perspective being a predominantly British one defending this on the basis of epistemological relativism one might also concede that it's difficult if not impossible to escape one's own culture and for that matter heritage to paraphrase Stuart Hall heritage becomes the material embodiment of the spirit of the nation a collective representation of the nation's version of tradition a concept pivotal to the lexicon of natural sorry national virtues a nation's heritage inevitably reflects the governing assumptions of its time and its context necessarily inflected by the power and authority of those who have colonized the past and whose versions of history matter as hall notes we should think of the heritage as a discursive practice it is one of the ways in which the nation slowly constructs for itself a sort of collective social memory here Stuart Hall is particularly telling in his analysis of heritage as being bound into the meaning of the nation through a double inscription he explains and this is a long quote what the nation means is essentialized the English seem unaware that anything fundamental has changed since 1066 I like that quote it's essential meaning appears to have emerged at the very moment of its origin a moment always lost in the myths as well as the mists of time and then successfully embodied as a distilled essence in the various arts and artifacts of the nation for which the heritage provides the archive back to the last talk in fact what the nation means is an ongoing project under constant reconstruction we come to know its meaning partly through the objects and artifacts which have been made to stand for and symbolize its essential values its meaning is constructed within not above or outside representation it is through identifying with these representations that we come to be its subjects by subjecting ourselves to its dominant meanings what would England mean without its cathedrals its churches its castles and country houses its gardens thatch cottages and hedge roads landscapes its Trafalgar's Dunkirk's and Maffikings its Nelson's and its church hills its Elgar's and its Benjamin Britain's that's all Stuart Hall's quote of course we can ask just the same question from wherever we come the answer to the question is who is sorry the answer to the question who is the heritage for was clear enough in the British case at least it had been intended for those who belong a society which is imagined as in broad terms culturally homogeneous and unified except that of course societies are no longer societies never were just like this indeed throughout the second part of the 20th century the increased recognition of cultural diversity and the contribution of multiculturalism to western societies seriously challenged any notion of a fixed canon of heritage to say nothing of this chocolate box image of England in what Nicola Borreaux describes as the outer modern travel and migration we live in a world of global movements where diasporic communities of different ethnic origins are forced or they elect to relocate to areas away from their settled territories contributing hugely to the character and makeup of nation states in western societies in the process so to what extent of those curating heritage managed to take account of these competing interests indeed heritages theory would have it that heritage has had to shift emphasis from a focus on intrinsic value to representativeness the objective being to protect a representative sample of the diverse range of places objects and practices that could be reasonably be called heritage now or in the future but is this actually born out in practice for Stuart Hall in 1999 the answer was emphatically no heritage remains socially excluding disproportionately representing the white middle class majority he called for a program of change in which our cultural institutions should be held to account Hall's vision which he described as nothing short of a cultural revolution was of a radical change to heritage management in which state and government are committed to producing in reality rather than in name a more culturally diverse socially just equal and inclusive society and culture he articulates a program of change that puts the so-called ethnic minority and communities from the Caribbean and Indian subcontinent together with the smaller groups of non-European minorities from Africa the Middle East China and the Far East and Latin America at its center he is under no illusions when it comes to the practical challenges of achieving such a revolution over and above the need for money he points to the operational inertia and vested interests of key organizations and gatekeepers as well as the enhanced program of training and recruitment for curators professionals and artists from the minority communities so that they can bring their knowledge and expertise to bear on transforming dominant curatorial and exhibitory habits his agenda for change is cast in terms of rewriting the margins into the center the outside into the inside the focus is put squarely on the minority communities in all the arts the migrant experience and traditions of origin in short the attention has shifted from the heritage of the mainstream to the heritage of marginalized communities it's very interesting to read Clara Arakisami's keynote talk delivered at the museum's association conference 10 years later this is 2009 when she reflects back on what Stuart Hall and others had said about whose heritage she writes rereading the conference report almost after 10 years was both exciting and disappointing in equal measure exciting because of the radical aspirations and recommendations that came out of the two-day event for the creation of a complete story of Britain which had the potential to stimulate significant changes in the sector disappointing because in my view the change has been extremely limited extremely patchy and not cohesive picking up again on Boreal's alter modernity we might question the centrality of the nation state in this discussion of heritage the international nature of this conference and it's being hosted from within a world heritage studies program is after all testament to the shift that has taken place in our awareness of global cultures and global heritage this very place we're in Berlin is also so redolent of the idea of crossing boundaries of many different types so how do we make sense of the parts and the whole how joined up are our heritage discourses today whilst I think Hall's vision has much to recommend it it also introduces a problem in that it appears to unwittingly perpetuate a labor of division that effectively usurps the dominant hegemonic culture with one from marginalized communities and in the process continuing to emphasize tradition and heritage as something relevant only to those who belong this was surely the very point that Stuart Hall was trying to move away from and so my provocation to you today is that there is an alternative approach which is founded not in the name of social inclusion or cultural diversity but in the name of art and here I have in mind a universalist conception of art as a human capacity for shared awareness of our real selves and of our relationships with others for despite its radical individualism and we've heard about this earlier on today art is intrinsically open and available to all indeed the whole purpose of art to the extent that I can talk loosely about art having a purpose and I'm thinking of Kant and so on about purpose is of nurse the lack of purpose to the whole the whole purpose of art is in sharing a heightened awareness of our shared state of being human in a world not wholly of our own making the point of heritage is surely not to define minorities in terms of their otherness but rather to understand ourselves whoever we are in other words whether minority or majority through a shared awareness that embraces the other to be clear this is not to call for difference and distinctive identity to be brushed under the carpet not at all nor is it to encourage a cultural relativism or some bland reductive universal notion of human being my belief is that our understanding of the distinctiveness of being black white ethnic chinese afro-american german english syrian muslim christian male female and so on and so on will in fact be sharpened in the process for ultimately we can only understand difference if we recognize first that we have something in common I was bound to put up here a quote from Maya Angelou who died a week or so ago wonderful writer from america she said all great artists draw from the same resource the human heart which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unlike in this sense heritage can learn from art but art understood as continuous with not separate from everyday human activity and practice and so here we come to the critical question of why innovate heritage matters what is it for and why now a key contextual factor that I've already alluded to is that we're living in a period of rapid change of unprecedented innovation and considerable unpredictability labeled variously as liquid modernity reflexive modernity or the morphogenetic society and there are other labels applied to it too what we might have taken for granted about how to live our lives yesterday seemingly counts for rather less today as Margaret Archer notes for the first time in human history the imperative to be reflexive is becoming categorical for all habits and habitus in part reproduced and transformed at a societal level and no longer reliable guides we must instead rely on our own reflexivity understood as the regular exercise of the mental ability shared by all normal people to consider themselves in relation to their social contexts and vice versa so what does this mean for arts and heritage are they increasingly peripheral to our modern times are we witnessing generations of young people growing up with no real sense of the value of either art or heritage choosing rather to reflexively manage their own individual responses to the complex changes and inequalities they encounter as it happens I find myself writing this or I found myself writing this on the morning after the european elections and the results being published across the continent there was a shift towards anti-establishment and nationalist parties a political earthquake as it was talked about a lot in the media whatever our views on Europe might be I think there is something deeply troubling about the emerging intensification of a sense of individualism that appears to be putting ever more energies into the labor of division shutting doors keeping people out differentiating between you and me your heritage and my heritage this is itself born out of a deep felt anxiety about the division of labor they are taking our jobs as it goes surely against this backdrop we need to be asking probing questions about the wider significance of arts and heritage in our society today what relevance they have or could have why innovate heritage matters and this brings me back you'll be pleased to know to the title of my talk reencharging arts and heritage through social creativity a few moments ago I spoke of my understanding of art as a universal human capacity it's my view that we've largely lost touch with this understanding of art although it has its roots in the older latin meaning with roughly which roughly translates as skill or craft indeed just as I've drawn attention to the problem of valuing heritage and creativity so art especially in the context of aesthetics has been reduced to a focus on judgment in this case aesthetic values such as beauty or the sublime and those doing the judgment in referring to reencharting in the title I seek to draw our attention to a process in which we recover what has been lost at its most profound I take the world to be enchanted in this sense of inherently meaningful and valuable the world is always already enchanted we need to re-enchant only to the extent that we have lost sight of this in the context of the arts I'm here referring to the human capacity to do art as a universal human practice and I need to recognize this once more in the context of heritage I have in mind the idea that what is at stake is actually our heritage understood at its most inclusive sense in other words all our heritage in this respect it's important to emphasize that arts and heritage are mutually constitutive of each other art is dependent upon though not reducible to heritage heritage is dependent upon though not reducible to art following through the logic of this relationship we might then might see that in the process of re-encharging art we might also re-enchant heritage and vice versa I'm aware again that my argument is being developed here at a somewhat abstract level there's a danger of getting wrapped up in a theoretical debate that apparently has little to do with the reality of doing art or doing heritage on the ground to the extent that it is our theory which dictates what we do in practice even if we're not always aware of this exchange I think such a focus is is worth pursuing however we can move towards a more grounded understanding of these points by reflexively applying what I have termed social creativity whilst creativity is often cast as a rising in one's particular space and time and in a moment of individual brilliance in fact all creative practice is necessarily social we really do stand on the shoulders of giants but also on those of many others of smaller stature too what distinguishes social creativity from creativity is the sense in which this is a human capacity to discover new possibilities and bring them into being through the active crossing of boundaries social creativity necessarily challenges our relational consciousness towards others and with the other all types of boundaries are up for grabs including those between traditional disciplines arts and sciences heritage etc social groupings professionals artists practitioners etc countries nation states citizenship globalization temporal and spatial categories the past the present the future or even modes of knowledge theory practice though I suggest that social creativity is very much characteristic of human beings it is also not an easy practice to embark on we find this to be particularly the case in the context of organizations institutions and nations that rely for their very existence on a shared often tacit knowledge of what it is to belong to them in this regard heritage represents the most challenging of arenas in which to start crossing boundaries heritage after all seems to be the means of defining what the boundaries are in the first place crossing boundaries sorry crossing borders in this context can feel painful and awkward it is easy to be misunderstood and misrepresented it is an ambiguous space a poetic space as we heard before pregnant with possibilities and one is reminded of Heidegger's art is a freedom to become something the free becoming of a truth it is of course the sort of space that artists inhabit for example think of Keats negative capability as he was talking about Shakespeare that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties mysteries and doubts without any irritable reaching after fact and reason a difficult space to be but a space where artists reside they have to in an earlier paper focusing on the creative economy I've put forward some practical steps for introducing social creativity in our higher education system and these included enabling interdisciplinarity very key supporting collective critical reflections such as we are going to be doing over this conference in the next three days facilitating engagement again developing communicative tolerance so key that word tolerance and facilitating engagement and sorry applying alternative methods seems to me that these have a relevance to in this context of innovate heritage let me give you an example in my current research project 53 million artists I'm working with artists colleagues to re-enchant society's views about art and creative practice our simple message is that doing art understood in its broader sense is good for you rather like having your five portions of fruit and veg every day it's good for you doing art in this sense art is not exclusively practiced by artists by which I mean those people that society labels as such nor does art simply refer to those pictures that get hung in art galleries or the type of music we might hear in a concert hall we are all artists poets even just as we are all creatives because these are the fundamentals of human qualities as such we should all be party this to this conversation between arts and heritage I want to be very clear again I am not putting forward a relativist view that kind of says we're all as good as each other as being artists what I'm saying here leaves plenty of room for a critical edge in fact an understanding of art and of great artists in a way that otherwise perhaps we might overlook the 53 million artists project by the way referring to 53 million the population of England at our population whatever supports collective critical reflection through a number of means including a web portal that invites individuals to post personal examples of art and associated reflections on their practice engagement with everyday artists if you like is at the heart of the project communicative tolerance is promoted but without dumbing down the arts to its lowest common denominator and by working with employees to encourage their staff to take half a day a month to engage in doing art in whatever sense this might be the project is also actively employing an alternative method geared towards changing the status quo another example of applying alternative methods comes from the Battersea Art Center in London which is housed in what was an old town hall I don't know if you can see this building over on the right there it's a labyrinthine building it's got 80 rooms very complex structure and a volatile history going back to the late 19th century over the last seven or eight years it has undertaken an innovative approach to reworking its heritage around the idea of playgrounding which itself takes ideas from a creative approach to theatre called scratch the scratch process is based around six principles which defines the ethos of Battersea Art Center and the work it produces if you can see them here it's about taking risks improvising artists led very key that it's artists led they bring into the spaces for example they've got six bedrooms in this building where the artists devise their own design for the rooms as if they were their own bedrooms but also as an artwork so again art and artists are throughout the whole process of making the building of collaborating rule four taking time five and learning number six and at its heart is the idea of placing artists and audiences at the center of the architectural process so it's very much about involving people in this everyday sense of people as everyday artists but also people from the arts from not just the United Kingdom Brazil and elsewhere really engaging communicating with people from here there and everywhere now playgrounding to playgrounding develops ideas through collaboration before testing them through a series of low-cost investments the center now has its spaces its facilities its shows its works its art all developed with and through the collaboration of individuals that are seeing the world through the eyes of artists as the Battersea Art Center themselves state the idea of playgrounding is simply about artists staff and audiences doing what we all used to do in playgrounds creating flexible worlds in which anything could happen what is being advocated here by me is not some naive return to childhood ways the focus on play is extremely serious after all play has the potential to be transformational play is a fundamental human behavior which is emancipatory in nature through play we make the opportunity to be someone else or do something different that can transform both ourselves and those around us in one sense play does involve a stepping out of real life into a temporal sphere of activity with a disposition of its own this is why art centers such as the Battersea Art Center provide a genuine hub for playing with ideas that matter of course but it is in play and I would argue in art that we are also perhaps most real most ourselves maybe the practical lesson we should take from all this is that we need to find ways of keeping the places where we can play with social creativity open holding the play space is a skill in itself but one that we find in varying degrees in change agents whether they be artists therapists cultural entrepreneurs or indeed those attending a conference on innovate heritage so by way of conclusion bringing things to the close in his paper on whose heritage Stuart Hall talked of a cultural revolution in an echo of his revolutionary language my parting shot is a call for a radical new agenda on behalf of the arts and heritage in the 21st century whereas most discourses are geared towards promoting the arts and heritage seek sorry whereas most discourses geared towards promoting the arts and heritage seek to build awareness of arts and heritage my response in this paper is a different approach namely to build awareness through arts and heritage what is needed is not for us to do away with the arts and heritage cannon which is the sometimes unwitting implication of those approaches that call for social inclusion and cultural diversity to be the central principles of heritage but rather doing away with canonical thinking about art and heritage the cannon thinking here of archive too but the cannon I want to get rid of is old thinking about art that it is for other people that it is only for artists and old thinking about heritage it is either ours or theirs arts and heritage are not over there to be preserved or supported sideline from the world as we know it rather they point to the forms of shared awareness that we desperately need in the world today to manage in times of the reflexive imperative the task that is set before each of us is to live with real authenticity which you will recall requires drawing upon our distinctive human capacity to reconcile the irreconcilable this will involve each of us setting out on our own path guided by our personal reflexivity whilst at the same time being open to finding inspiration and direction from others and from the other it will also see us becoming innovators and at the same time upholders of our heritage finally as arts and heritage professionals practitioners and experts gathered here at this conference we will also have a duty to take forward this agenda through our public conversation and positive action our best indeed our only place to start on this journey is with ourselves and with our social creativity to finish then let us return once more to echo and narcissus in keeping perhaps with obvids metamorphosis i want to suggest a revised ending to his story incidentally this seems to be a very much in line with the best traditions of the performing arts where such an innovation is to be found in ample supply so just in time narcissus wakes up to the qualities that he cherishes as being most unique to his own reflection in the spring but in fact shared by all those around him including echo a happy union between our two main protagonists follow now whilst of it might leave it to the gods to provide the play space for narcissus and of and echo to live creatively and happily ever after my own view is that they like us hold the future rather more imminently in our hands i look forward then to the conversations and dialogue between ourselves over the rest of the conference and i hope once we've returned to our respective homes and countries for such conversations are surely a great first step in learning how to live with social creativity reencharting arts and heritage for everyone in the process thank you do we have time for questions or anybody have any questions or comments or is the sun really wanting us to go outside the sun really is wanting us yeah we've got a question or comment yeah it's more of a it's more of a comment really just in in live i don't know i felt when i was listening to you i felt like i wanted to talk about anti-social creativity just because i think the way in which you're talking about things it's just like neoliberal management speak and my worry is that it's in social engineering allowing certain kinds of social social creativity to make productive citizens and i just think there's the the specter of corruption that just looms so closely to your discourse so could you talk about that bit more please um well i'm very sorry if yeah i mean thinking reflexively that is so not my message so not a message of a neoliberal message so not about um that whole dynamic absolutely anti-social and social creativity um my perspective is as i was trying to get across but obviously didn't have haven't managed to do that perhaps as well as i might like to is very much coming from the perspective of of being a human being and whatever that means for all of us um more productive now i don't think more productive i think however that my perspective is to take art as something that i can do as an everyday artist but it's not because i want in some way to buy into a neoliberal or capitalistic agenda in fact i'm making the point in the paper that that's something i'm reacting to um if you look at the language you use and the language that's used they're convergent they're absolutely convergent i'm just i'm just putting it out there it's just there's a fine line and we live in dangerous times of uh in britain anyway talking to somebody who's living in britain yeah and so it's a very localised particular situation i'd love to know how it is for everyone else um i just think if we place a neoliberal management you know just any kind of management book next to your the way you were talking about social creativity let's do a comparative analysis i hope they come up very very different i can guarantee you um well they will from the point of view of as i'm saying in terms of real authenticity which again you know um is for me about reconciling the irreconcilable rather than having an oppositionist view that doesn't take into account the fact that we all of us live in a system not of our own choosing um in many different parts of the world in many different perspectives um and whether we like neoliberalism or whether we whether we and clearly i'm i'm i'm i'm not saying that i'm supporting that at all um whether or not it's something we're sympathetic to or not nonetheless our own individual journey is one of this as i say of this having to pragmatically come together with different discourses and different ways of being that allow us to be artists and to live with social creativity as i say now okay i'm taking the point that by using that rhetoric i might be seeing as somehow siding with the enemy i i i just absolutely do not feel that and if that came across in my talk um i'm really surprised if that came across in my talk because it's so not where i'm coming from but thanks for your observation i don't mean it that way at all what can i say yeah that's interesting um i don't think our neoliberal um you know faction is any more benign than than britans uh in australia um but it's interesting while um what while i hear what the other speaker is saying uh that is actually not to perspective um that i received from what you said so i have a different view um in terms of what you're trying to deliver and um yeah and i was going to make another comment but i'll leave it open to someone else okay thank you thank you i think i'm not i think we're gonna have to wrap up now i'm sorry we're done i think we're having a break thank you very much everybody so i just want to say really quickly we have um we went a little bit over time that's why i had to wrap up the question answer sorry um we will start again by introducing the artists who are participating in the visual art exhibition as well as two architectural installation spaces that are part of zetka and that will begin at 6 30 so we have i think more like 20 minute break um i would just like to remind or point out to everyone that um over here there's a large board with artwork um an installation by one of the artist um rosanna raymond and it's an interactive art piece so i just encourage you to take sticky notes and you write words or whatever you want so just to point this out um and at 8 o'clock or 7 38 where we will have dinner and there are um coupons that you need in order to get a plate so if you have not gotten that in your folder if you registered or came into registration a bit late um go to the registration desk to get this um and if you haven't for some reason registered or um fulfilled your complete registration with um paying for registration um please go to the registration desk and if you have any questions some new thank you