Click on the following links for more detailed information on all of the conference sessions.
1. Plane Stories: Encounters with objects
2. Military and civil aviation: Early developments and links
3. Intangible Cultural Heritage and Place
4. Place and Airspace
5. No Highway in the Sky: Can air routes join land and sea examples of cultural exchange?
6. Q&A: GA2020 Scientific Symposium
7. Digital Cultural Heritage
8. Vintage Aircraft Operation
9. The Modernist movement and aviation: Inspiration and influence
10. Conserving and Collecting Aviation Heritage
Military aviation: history, culture, archaeology and heritage
11. Investigating and analysing Second World War operations
12. The legacy of war: remembrance and commemoration
13. Military sites of significance: places and material culture
14. Air, Land and Sea
15. Air Memories
16. Australian Aviation Museums Network Workshop – CANCELLED
The complete suite of conference abstracts is in this file – Heritage of the Air 2019 Abstracts (Complete) – but individual abstract files can be found at each session description below.
1. Plane Stories: Encounters with objects
Material culture plays a fundamental and vibrant role in the field of memory studies. ‘Material memories’ and personal recollections are typically intertwined and interpenetrate. This session aims to articulate some of the ways that such entanglements between an object and an individual operate in daily life and on special occasions; and can thereby contribute diverse perspectives on understanding and experiences of Heritage of the Air.
Session Convenors: Steve Brown, Annie Clarke, Sally Brockwell, and Ursula Frederick
Contact: steveb.heritage@gmail.com
Plane Stories Encounters with Objects_Abstracts
2. Military and civil aviation: Early developments and links
Civil aviation in Australia and beyond would not be where it is today without developments and experiences in military heritage. This session aims to explore the history and heritage of Australian aviation through papers exploring links between Australia’s civil and military heritage.
Session Convenor: Rosemary Hollow
Contact: rosemary.hollow@canberra.edu.au
Military and Civil Aviation_Abstracts
3. Intangible Cultural Heritage and Place
In Australia, forms of intangible cultural heritage arise from every cultural group – from the cultures of Indigenous Australians, the cultures transmitted and adapted through each wave of migrant settler groups, and home-grown cultural practices that reflect peoples’ response to the environment, history and cultural settings.’ Chaired by the National Scientific Committee for Intangible Cultural Heritage (Australia ICOMOS), this session will explore the ways in which projects and case studies on aspects of the heritage of the air enable a better understanding of how cultural practices contribute to or stand apart from the cultural significance of place. The aim of this session is to identify how intangible cultural heritage has been recognised or ignored in Australian heritage practice. Presentations will contribute to the Intangible Cultural Heritage Toolkit.
Session Convenor: Lisa Sturis
Contact Email: lisasturis@hotmail.com
Intangible cultural heritage and place _Abstracts
4. Place and Airspace
How have aerial perspectives transformed life on the ground? This session brings together views from urban planning, law and art to explore how communities have mobilized concepts of air space and Country to impact cultural, social and legal outcomes.
Session Convenor: Tracy Ireland
Contact: tracy.ireland@canberra.edu.au
Place and Airspace_Abstracts
5. No Highway in the Sky: Can air routes join land and sea examples of cultural exchange?
Aviation helped forge a truly international twentieth century. This session considers the validity of air routes as cultural routes, along with land and sea examples, in the context of current definitions and understandings of global heritage. The session invites contributions on the evolution of different aviation routes, such as the QANTAS Kangaroo Route, from early flying-boats to the jumbo-jet and beyond. It will explore the cultural exchanges that flowed from the global migration and mass tourism of the post war boom. It welcomes reflections on the intangible cultural significance of early air travel through access to both private and public memories. Diaries, photographs, travel posters, press reports and populist media such as Frank Clunes’ 1948 travelogue High Ho to London and Neville Shute’s 1948 novel, the 1951 film classic No Highway in the Sky can illuminate and record cultural exchange.
Session Convenors: Timothy Hubbard, Sandy Blair and Kirsty Altenburg
Contact: timothyh@oldstandrews.com.au and sandy.blair@anu.edu.au
No highway in the sky_Abstracts
6. Q&A: GA2020 Scientific Symposium
The GA2020 Scientific Symposium will comprise 6 separate themes: Shared Cultures; Shared Heritage; Shared Responsibility; Indigenous Heritage; Culture-Nature Journey; and Minority Heritages. Each of the Australian co-chairs will provide a short introduction to their respective themes, identify key issues, and outline the challenges for advancing the issues via the GA2020 Scientific Symposium. The short presentations will be followed by questions and discussion.The session provides an opportunity to speak directly to the Australian Co-chairs of the Scientific Symposium and discuss with them how you might contribute to and/or participate in the event. The call forGA2020 Scientific Symposium session proposals and abstracts will open on 2 October 2019 and close on 1 January 2020.This session provides an ideal opportunity to discuss your ideas for proposals with the Australian Theme Co-chairs.
Session Convenor: Steve Brown
Contact: steveb.heritage@gmail.com
GA2020 Scientific Symposium Q&A_Abstracts
7. Digital Cultural Heritage
Digital technologies can augment histories with crowdsourced data, enrich archives with sensory experiences, enhance interpretation with interactive media, and improve heritage management with condition capture and maintenance systems. This session presents three diverse cases where digital technologies have been deployed to expand research and interpretive capacity, and enable the creation of richer histories.
Session Convenor: Chris Landorf and Kelly Greenop
Contact: c.landorf@uq.edu.au
Digital cultural heritage_Abstracts
8. Vintage Aircraft Operation
The difficulties of operating vintage aircraft today are not necessarily those expected. They include technical and paperwork challenges, and often finding (or making!) rare parts and regaining lost knowledge. So why do it? Entertainment, commemoration, education – as well as enjoying it! This is intangible heritage in action. This session will feature practitioners and participants in heritage aircraft operation to explore how and why people work hard to put historic aircraft back in the air – and keep them there. From rediscovering the often overlooked heritage of ultralights, to flying historic Australian aircraft and Spitfires, to finding the next generation of vintage aircraft operators, we present firsthand insights.
Panel Session: Vintage Aircraft Operation – How it Really Works
In this panel session we present a rare opportunity to ask the actual vintage aircraft operators about the real challenges of maintaining and flying historic machines. James Kightly, ‘Vintage Aero Writer’ and reporter on the area, will briefly explain the background, introduce the panel’s experts, and open the panel to audience questions.
Session Convenor: James Kightly
Contact: jkightly@yahoo.com.au
Vintage Aircraft Operation_Abstracts
9. The Modernist movement and aviation: Inspiration and influence
The advent of accessible air travel in the mid-20th century led to increased requirements for new airports, amenities and associated infrastructure. This session invites presentations on aviation architecture, through the lens of modernism.
How did the modernist movement influence air travel, and vice versa? How did architects embrace the utilitarian design and functional requirements of airport architecture (i.e. terminals and control towers)? How were designers reimagining uniforms and fashion for travelling? How did connecting countries and cultures contribute (or otherwise) to the globalisation of airport design? How did the effect of overseas travel influence Australian architectural styles?
Session Convenor: Canberra Modern (Rachel Jackson)
Contact: rachelj@gml.com.au
The Modernist movement and aviation_Abstracts
10. Conserving and Collecting Aviation Heritage
The Centenary of Civil Aviation in 2021 will focus public interest on the contribution of aviation to Australian society and on vulnerable civil aviation heritage. Globally, aviation has been a key component in the cultural imaginary of modernity and is accepted as part of the texture of the fabric of contemporary life, and as agent and consequence of economic development and globalization. This session explores how and why communities and organisations are conserving and collecting aviation heritage, what is being collected and conserved, and what narratives and values these objects and places convey
Session Convenor: Tracy Ireland
Contact: tracy.ireland@canberra.edu.au
Conserving and collecting_Abstracts
Military aviation: history, culture, archaeology and heritage
Heritage of the Air is a broad church. It values the contribution of amateur, professional and academic archaeological, heritage, cultural, and aviation historians in interpreting the history, culture and heritage of Australia’s 20th and 21st century war and peace time military aviation experience.
The three streams that will comprise this session are listed below:
11. Investigating and analysing Second World War operations
12. The legacy of war: remembrance and commemoration
13. Military sites of significance: places and material culture
Session convenor: Kristen Alexander
Contact: Kristen.Alexander@student.adfa.edu.au
Investigating and analysing WWII ops_Abstracts
The legacy of war_Abstracts
Military sites of significance_Abstracts
14. Air, Land and Sea
This session explores aviation heritage in both land and maritime contexts. How is it valued by communities and managed through regulatory frameworks? What challenges exist for the future of aviation heritage as it is investigated, accessed, conserved and interpreted as a distinctive component of 20th century heritage and contemporary archaeology?
Session Convenor: Tracy Ireland
Contact: tracy.ireland@canberra.edu.au
Air Land and Sea_Abstracts
15. Air Memories
Since its inception, aviation has engendered community and cultural engagement well beyond its direct requirements for facilities, labour and clientele. This session will explore the ‘Air memories’ of diverse communities and individuals, exploring the fuller human reach of aviation in Australia and beyond. Papers will ask who engaged with the new world of flight, from workers shaping novel logistics chains, to the crowds who attended airshows and queued for joy flights. How has aviation changed us, as individuals and communities?
Session Convenor: Tracy Ireland
Contact: tracy.ireland@canberra.edu.au
Air Memories_Abstracts
16. Australian Aviation Museums Network Workshop – CANCELLED
The purpose of the Workshop will be to review and critique the Final Proposal for a National Aviation Museum Collection across Australia before final submission to the Federal Government. Feedback and evaluation will be sought and considered for inclusion in the Final proposal.
At the Aviation Cultures Conference in 2017 a paper was presented outlining a proposal to build a National Aviation Museum around the significant aircraft held across the whole of Australia by member Museums of the AMNN.
At the 2018 Aviation Cultures this proposal was addressed again in a panel discussion to gauge support for such a proposal. The response was encouraging.
The proposal has now been developed into a full report/submission outlining the proposal in detail and ready for submission to the Federal Government.
Session Convenor: David Byrne
Contact: david.byrne@amnet.net.au
