Dear Colleagues,

The ICOM-CC Directory Board during its last meeting approved an
activity project to be presented at the ICOM General Conference in
Melbourne next year. The topic will deal with the tourism and the
inadequacy of safeguards to ensure the preservation and conservation
of diverse cultures and heritages.
The sobject is very topical and should interest many of the ICOM
International Committees as well as, we think, to be of particular
concern to Australia.

Over the past forty years the tourism industry has grown to such an
extent that travel is no longer restricted to a wealthy elite and
there are very few locations in the world which are not accessible to
the tourist. This means that sites of archaeological or historic
interest as well as the diversity of cultures and heritages are under
far more serious threat than previously.
ICOM-CC does not wish to deny to people the benefits which tourism
indoubtedly offers, but it does see an urgent need for greater
investiments and resources to protect against the negative effects of
mass-tourism.

The provisional heading for the ICOM-CC presentation is:
"No sousteinable Tourism without Conservation Programmes".
Under this topic ICOM-CC plans to organise in Melbourne different
kinds of activity and between them a carousel slide show.

The idea is to gather 40 slides (a carousel can hold up to 80 slides)
representing specific examples of tourism-related problems. Each
slide will be complemented with a second one containing relevant
explanatory data. The carousel would run continuosly during the
General Meeting.

In order to realise this project we need slides of good quality and
relevant to the topic:
mass-tourism = serious threat to the heritage.
We appeal through the ICOM distribution List to all ICOM members:
if you have one or more slides which you think could be of use to our
project, please send them to:

Puccio Speroni
National Museum of Denmark
Conservation Department
Postbox 260
DK-Brede, 2800 Lyngby
Denmark

Each slide should be accompanied by a note containing where [the
country, the location, the name of the place (e.g. S. Peter Church,
Amlet Castle), and when (approximatively) the photo was taken].
We also need to know the name of the photographer, if the photo has a
copyright and the name of the beneficiary.
We will achnowledge receipt of each photo. All original photo will be
returned to the respective owners (we will make copies of the
selected ones) in a maximum of six mounths time from to-day's data.
We have to add that the ICOM-CC Directory Board reserves the right to
select the photos.

On behalf of the ICOM Conservation Committee, I thank in advance all
those colleagues who would like to help us in such a project.

Puccio Speroni
Vice-Chair, ICOM Committee for Conservation
E-mail:  [log in to unmask]