ICOMOS-UK Event: Industrial Heritage Today: Conservation and Community

Thursday 23rd April 2026, 5pm, at London Canal Museum

ICOMOS-UK invite you to an event exploring current and international best practice and
future directions in Industrial Heritage.

To celebrate the International Day for Monuments and Sites (aka World Heritage Day) and to mark the launch of ICOMOS-UK’s new National Scientific Committee for Industrial Heritage, this event explores
our changing relationship to the industrial past. Climate change, environmental degradation, deindustrialisation, and economic uncertainty have all shifted our perceptions of the great industrial monuments of coal and steel, shipbuilding and textile manufacturing, and created a complex set of challenges and opportunities relating to conservation, use and adaption, sense of place and community identity.

The theme of this year’s International Day is ‘Living Heritage’ and its vulnerability in the face
of multiple hazards. New approaches to industrial heritage are fundamental to addressing
these, and to the ways in which we value and apply local experience, traditional knowledge,
skills and expertise.

This is the first in a series of events in 2026 through which the new Industrial Heritage Committee will begin to shape its responses to these challenges, drawing on national and international thinking and
practice. Please join ICOMOS-UK to begin the process of drafting the critical questions for industrial
heritage in the 21st Century.

The event will start at 5pm on 23rd April 2026, with talks and discussion followed by a drinks
reception. The venue is the London Canal Museum, which tells the story of how London’s canals
transformed and industrialised the city. The museum has exhibits on the origins and
construction of the canals, the social history of their operation, and life on the water for
their communities. The museum also holds an unexpected history: of the transportation and
storage of ice, with an ice-well under the site. The museum is a 5-10 minute walk from Kings Cross station, and is situated on the Regent’s Canal.

To book, please click here.

Members £12, Non-Members £15, Students £5.