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May is preservation month, a time when we celebrate preservation successes and recognize the many benefits that historic preservation brings to communities. Historic preservation as a field was once primarily concerned with the physical fabric of buildings. The modern preservation movement, however, has evolved to take a more expansive focus on community wellbeing. From community identity to civic discourse, the places we inhabit and the stories we tell about them play an essential role in cultivating thriving, sustainable, and equitable towns and cities.
At Historic New England, we apply this broad view of preservation to all of our activities, sharing it through tours, outreach, and year-round programming. Once a year, at the annual Historic New England Summit, we gather with the broader preservation community to reflect critically on the ways that preservation sustains communities. From embodied carbon to placemaking, past Summit programs have engaged a diverse audience of preservationists, interested members of the public, and interdisciplinary thought leaders in examining the intersections of preservation with sustainability, heritage, housing, access and inclusion, and more. Since 2022, Summit has featured the unique perspectives of more than ninety leading voices across numerous disciplines and has fostered countless conversations.
This year, we are thrilled to hold Summit in Portland, Maine, on November 14 and 15 — and we hope you will join us. Building on past themes while taking on the most timely and critical issues impacting our region, Summit explores how to cultivate thriving communities, both now and in the future. The 2024 Summit will tackle ideas of community health and wellness, and how arts and culture encourage healing. It will examine the notion of trust: what it means for a heritage organization to be a trusted institution, and what it takes to maintain that trust. It will look critically at how the landscape of philanthropy is changing, and how new priorities may shape that landscape into the future. It will consider representation, and how to build more equitable schools, museums, communities, and collective futures. It will discuss new potential lives for polluted spaces, climate-driven change, and more.
Preservation Month celebrates historic preservation’s benefit to communities, and the heart of Summit is an exploration of these impacts and connections. Summit centers the idea that preservation work is essential to improving lives and sustaining communities, and that the basis of this work is a connected and active preservation movement. These challenges are far-reaching and will not be solved in a vacuum, so Summit pulls together inspiration from across disciplines and fosters new connections, ideas, and ways of thinking.
The challenges Summit tackles are regional, national, and international in scope. The conference itself is only a beginning, and the impact of the conversations and connections that it creates will continue beyond its final session. We hope that you will be a part of those conversations, and this movement, and that we will see you in Portland this November. Visit our website to learn more about the Summit and register to attend.
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