Heritage Workshop Sponsors the Australia ICOMOS National Conference, 2025

Heritage Workshop is proud to be a sponsor of the Australia International Council on Monuments and Sites 2025 National Conference, taking place from 17 to 19 November in Ballarat, on Wadawurrung Country. As part of this overall conference commitment, we are specifically supporting Emerging Heritage Professionals.

This focus on future leaders is integral to our philosophy of next-generation conservation. Our work is dedicated to the innovative mindset necessary to sustaining heritage in a world experiencing rapid change.

The conference themes, ‘Battlefronts’ and ‘Un-Settling Ground’, challenge us to transform heritage practice, and Heritage Workshop is contributing actively with two conference papers. Our first paper, a white paper, suggests current urban heritage design practices provide fabulous opportunities for conservation. Our second paper argues we must re-earn our social license for heritage to remain relevant. We are also chairing a panel on Heritage and AI, exploring how Artificial Intelligence is transforming heritage practice.

Our approach to heritage is structured around our four core values, designed to ensure that conservation is dynamic, socially relevant, and expertly guided.

Practical and Grounded Advice

We believe that our recommendations must be clear, actionable, and tailored to the project's specific context, founded on robust evidence and critical analysis. The future of historic environments and their communities depends on using rigorous research and nuanced conceptual approaches.

We stress that discretion in planning decisions, which allows for positive heritage outcomes such as modernising and adapting heritage places, must be based on comprehensive, robust and evidence-based heritage advice. For example, in the Berak v Port Phillip CC VCAT case concerning a single-bedroom extension in Elwood, the council’s written heritage advice supporting the extension was ultimately found not to include sufficient reasoning to support the exercise of discretion to the local heritage planning scheme. This result underscores the necessity for professionals to supply robust evidence to justify incremental change and manage complex heritage and planning policy.

Strengthening Values in Place

Our approach uses best-practice methodologies to strengthen the cultural significance of places, particularly by championing the inclusion of social value alongside aesthetic, historic, and scientific values. We believe conservation is fundamentally about sustaining the values that people and societies ascribe to places over time.

A key portfolio example of prioritising this social value is our work on Federation Square. We co-founded the community campaign that led to its state heritage listing. The listing was achieved by proving the social value of the site as a public and civic gathering place, demonstrating that the value lies in how a community uses and relates to a space.

Another example is our work on the Nicholas Building, where we provided an up-to-date significance assessment focusing on its social, historical, and cultural values since the 1970s, crucial to recognising its ongoing role as a creative hub for artists and tenants.

Adapting Places for the Future

We are forward-looking and committed to economic, social, and environmental sustainability, enabling places to evolve and adapt. Heritage is at a juncture where it must address the multiple crises of relevance, including the climate crisis and the housing crisis.

We actively integrate heritage into urban solutions:

Climate Adaptation and Sustainability

We promote the proven benefits of adaptive reuse and retrofit of existing structures, noting this delivers positive climate benefits by reducing carbon emissions compared to demolition and rebuilding. This commitment is reflected in the Heritage Strategy for South Australia, which Heritage Workshop drafted, linking heritage to climate resilience and net zero emissions through facilitating adaptive reuse of heritage places for housing and commercial uses.

Housing and Density

We argue that heritage is not a scapegoat for the housing crisis and can be part of the solution. Our walking tours in Carlton and Fitzroy showcase examples of infill housing and warehouse conversions that successfully integrate new housing into historic contexts. We advocate for modernising the Heritage Overlay to permit heritage-appropriate, values-based and design-sensitive development responses to enable greater densification.

Empowering Our Clients

We operate as independent consultants, equipping our clients and the broader profession with the knowledge and resources to achieve their goals. Our expertise is developed from over a decade of research, advocacy, and education, where we have taught in Australia’s leading conservation courses and delivered new subjects that integrate the latest theories and innovative practices.

This commitment to sharing cutting-edge concepts is demonstrated through our diverse project portfolio.

Truth-Telling and Reconciliation

We provided rigorous historical advice to the City of Moreland (now Merri-bek), tracing its name to British Caribbean slave plantations. This expertise helped the council and residents move towards reconciliation and truth-telling by adopting a new name, Merri-bek. Our research project won a Victorian Community History Award.

By sponsoring Emerging Heritage Professionals, we provide a vital platform for the next generation of specialists to connect, share knowledge, and embrace the innovative, reflexive approaches necessary for next-generation conservation to thrive in the decades ahead.

We look forward to meeting and learning from the Young Professionals stream of the conference at the Night Walking Tour and Networking Event on the evening of 17 November 2025 at the Australia ICOMOS National Conference, 2025.