More ways of sharing what we find on the internet

I have been particularly bad at writing new posts for the blog this past year. (Must try harder.)  Meanwhile, there are a lot of sources out there for industrial heritage news, and ever new ways of curating them. So here – a simple offering – to direct you to another site where I am collecting and posting news stories on INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE, and (ah – my favourites!) GRAIN ELEVATORS.

Implosions – another view

One of South Africa’s most popular (and simultaneously unpopular) cartoonists is Jonathan “Zapiro” Shapiro. This is his take on recent events.

Visit Zapiro’s website for more.

The end of the Athlone Cooling Towers in Cape Town

Last Sunday, huge crowds turned out to see the demolition of the Athlone Cooling Towers, something of a landmark on the Cape Flats. There are a lot of videos of the event on the web, but this one, from Silver Bullet Productions, is by far the best I’ve seen.  (And thanks to @GusSilber for the Twitter link.)

Second Seminar of Agro-Industrial Heritage: Places of Memory

The Second Seminar of Agro-Industrial Heritage: Places of Memory (#SSPA2010) will take place in St Charles, near Sao Paulo, Brazil, from 19th to 23rd October 2010. Google Translate struggles a bit with the Portuguese on the website, but it seems the organisers want to follow on from the first conference, held in Mendoza, Argentina, in May 2008, looking at landscapes and cultural routes relating to agricultural heritage. While the Mendoza meeting focused on  wine, coffee, and sugar, this time the organisers want to look at a broader range of agricultural industries, and also consider the ways in which information about these activities has been collected and interpreted.

Five thematic sessions are planned:

• The material heritage of the agricultural industry: architecture, spaces of production and spatial configuration;
• Intangible heritage of agribusiness: cultural practices, records and memories;
• Representatives of agribusiness assets: iconography and stories;
• Heritage agribusiness – landscapes and cultural routes: preservation, reuse and cultural tourism;
• The new countryside. Interpretation of heritage through digital media.

Papers, in Spanish or Portuguese only, are to be submitted by 15 June.

Athlone Power Station, Cape Town

In 2006, I wrote about proposals to redevelop the Athlone Power Station.  More than three years later, it’s the the site that is making the first move.  On February 14th, “some concrete rings around one of the towers started falling off“, and engineers fear for their imminent collapse.  The City of Cape Town, owners of the site, have now decided  to demolish the towers within weeks.

Only 48 years old, and therefore not protected under the Heritage Resources Act, it was never very likely that a case was going to be made for retention based on their ‘heritage value’. Undoubtedly a lot of people will be happy to see them go, not least those who have been living in their shadow in Langa all these years, but they undoubtedly do have a ‘landmark value’ in the area.

But the best proposals for adaptive (and environmentally friendly) reuse of the towers have to have come from the pen of local cartoonist Chip Snaddon, and published in the Argus.

from the Cape Argus (p.14) 19-Feb-2010

update:
Plans well underway for demolition of Athlone cooling towers at the end of May

Michigan Technological University’s Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program

Michigan Technological University’s Industrial Heritage and Archaeology program is taking over the original address of this site at blogspot.  Tim Scarlett is the new program co-ordinator, so watch for news from him coming soon.

Conferences in 2010

Two big conferences on the slate right now for next year.

First, there is 2010 Outback and Beyond, convened jointly byAustralia ICOMOS, TICCIH Australia and the City of Broken Hill the annual Australia ICOMOS conference will take place in Broken Hill from 22-25 April 2010.

Then, in Aug’2010 there is Reusing the Industrial Past, the first joint conference of ICOHTEC – The International Committee for the for the History of Technology History and TICCIH – The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage in Tampere, Finland on August 10-15, 2010. The minor partner is Worklab, the international association of labour museums.

Keeping in contact after Cordoba?

(1) Please join TICCIH, and get involved with the one international organisation that speaks for industrial heritage. Remember – TICCIH acts as the Scientific Committee of ICOMOS on industrial heritage.

(2) Please join the Facebook group ‘Industrial Archaeology’ (you don’t have to ‘friend’ anybody, or use Facebook for anything else).  But it’s a good place to launch a discussion forum.

(3) Sign up for Twitter, and watch for latest news on industrial archaeology and industrial heritage, found on the internet and elsewhere, by following @indus_heritage or #indus_heritage.

(4) Send any contributions (project news, photographs, sites at risk) for this page to industrialheritage@live.co.za

Conference on Agriculture and Food Heritage

The Second International Conference on Agriculture and Food Heritage has finished in Cordoba, Argentina.

The next meeting will be held in 2011, in Valencia, Spain.

Many thanks are due to Laura Amarilla and her organising crew; to Luci, Gabriella, Gustavo, Alexandro and others who with much patience and good humour helped me understand at least some of what was being said; and to Domingo who translated my presentation so that the rest could understand what I was trying to say.

(To see the feed from this conference on Twitter, search for #CAFH)

TICCIH Argentina

The Second International Conference on Agriculture and Food Heritage, takes place in Cordoba, Argentina, from 4 – 7 November 2009, and follows the success of the Reims Conference in May 2007.

TICCIH Argentina has now set up a website, and there’s an English translation of the section about the conference, courtesy of Google.