On Fri, 3 Dec 1999, Per Rekdal wrote:
+++++ [CLIP] +++++
> Do you suggest that the fee for the General Conferences should not be
> subsidised? If the answer is yes, the conference fee would of course be
> much, much higher than now. Would the consequences of this be "democratic"?
> For what purposes should then the hosts use the funding from their
> government and other donors to? (I promised myself not to comment on the
> statements, but I have to add something about your comments on the London
> conference: London is the RELATIVELY cheapest flight destination after
> possibly N.Y. in the world from anywhere in the world, as well as popular
> with its multitude of museums. Plus have the majority of the ICOM members
> in the nearby European countries. A considerably higher conference fee say
> in Melbourne might have scared off quite a few participants).
++++++
Per:
First, a key purpose of ICOM-L is that we all SHOULD comment on each
others statements and views. ICOM is currently undertaking much the most
fundamental review of itself in 28 years, and this cannot just be left to
the Task Force to try to produce solutions for the next 28 years, however
expert, and widely drawn the Task Force may be.
Returning to your main point: charging the full cost of attendance in the
Registration Fee for Melbourne would probably have added less than 10% to
the total cost of attendance for a European member: I honestly do not
believe that this would make a critical difference for the majority able
to afford to go to the General Conference in the first place. (Despite the
much greater distance and cost for the 70% of ICOM members who are
based in Europe, there were more at Melbourne that at Stavanger 3 years
earlier.)
To make a different comparison the Melbourne Triennial registration fee
for up to 8 days including the preliminary meetings was substantially less
than the registration fee that UK Museums Association charges every year
for its annual conference, with only a fraction of the number of
sessions, no huge translation or interpreting costs, etc.
I agree that ICOM would need to increase at the same time the number of
travel bursaries and scholarships for those who genuinely need a subsidy.
If our Australian hosts had still been able to raise the same amount of
private funding, but had charged a reasonable registration fee rather than
a heavily subsidised one, then at least 100 additional travel grants could
have been offered for those in real need of them, perhaps many more.
On the question of London: certainly it is a very cheap destination today,
but it definitely wasn't in the tightly regulated national airline cartel
days of 1983. I remember that the cheapest fare from London to Oslo then
cost more than double the cheapest fare from London to New York or
Washington. Far more significant still, however, are the living costs in
the host city. Again, as a member of the ICOM UK Board responsible for
mounting ICOM '83 in London, I well remember that at the time London was
rated by the travel industry as the world's 8th most expensive business
travel destination out of around 200 surveyed, and the 2nd most expensive
the "western" world.
However, the ICTOP "SWOT" analysis point questioning the policy of
subsidised registration fees for everybody was prompted by the much wider
issue that we now have a situation where virtually the only places that
can bid to host ICOM General Conference as places which want to host them,
and therefore subsidise them, for their own national or regional economic
or political reasons.
If anyone had any doubts about this, just remember that much the largest
and richest country in the European Union, Germany, was forced to withdraw
from the bidding for ICOM 2001 because it couldn't afford to host and
therefore subsidise the meeting in accordance with the current ICOM policy
and expectations.
Patrick Boylan
Chairperson, ICTOP
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