Consultant Andy Davis’ IAASF, a forum for protective security in museums and cultural institutions, has held its latest two-day conference in County Durham. Mark Rowe offers a digest.
One of the day two speakers, Madeleine Farrell, head of security at National Museums Liverpool, during her talk on ‘strategic financial planning’, set out the task for museum, art gallery and heritage security people as neatly as any. Security managers have to think about ‘commerciality’, while still trying to do the right things by the cultural heritage (that each generation of staff are only the stewards of, a genuinely-held feeling among security and non-security workers in the cultural sector). The range of speakers brought together to stately Redworth Hall Hotel outside Darlington (pictured) showed the range of threats to counter. A returning speaker, the veteran security adviser William Brown, discussed fire safety. Durham Det Insp Martin Wilson of the North East Business Resilience Centre talked cyber (I noted that among the delegates was someone from the British Library, which suffered one of the higher-profile ransomware attacks, in October 2023 and still according to its website recovering from the ‘disruption’). That resilience centre, and the other regional ones, police-led, are aimed particularly at small businesses; among businesses, like museums, the smaller ones with few or no IT or cyber specialists are most in need of support, don’t know necessarily where to turn, and yet face the same existential risk from cyber attack as anyone else.
Resilience
The IAASF event, now going for ten years since the first at the Baltic on Tyneside, covers crime, then, real-world and online, but also organisational resilience, the topic for a day two speaker, Paul Griffiths, chief executive of the Association for Cultural Enterprises. His theme; museums and cultural venues collaborate for the loan of items in their collections, and for marketing. Why not for the procurement of technology, for the solving of common problems? It makes sense to cast the net wider than securing against thieves – though the event did hear, on a Chatham House Rule basis, of thefts and attempted thefts, both out of hours and while open, against museums and related sites. The threat is no less because the thieves may not be interested in the artefact for its (priceless) cultural value; they may only be interested in melting the object for the value of the precious metal. Then the item is lost forever; but it also is, if damaged by fire, flood or even hungry mice or too much direct sunlight. That implies lots of needs for products and services to preserve collections; while (numerous speakers either acknowledged or admitted from experience) budgets are tight. That explains why museums are looking for more income streams, or more from the streams they have already – a cafe, or out of hours events, which bring risk and may require stewarding (on the way home I noted that York Minster is due to hold a Harry Potter event). It also raises questions about how keen museums and the cultural sector generally, dipping more into events, will be to comply with Martyn’s Law, the duty under the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act 2025 to take steps to counter the threat of terrorism.
Sensor beside candlestick
A case study inside the presentation by security consultant Dan Gillis showed how value in what museums and indeed any venue put on display lies not only in what it would fetch for sale: a candlestick was on show, and had a sensor beside it that sounded if anyone came too near to it (or indeed tried to slip a piece of card under it, to try to pull it away). Why not put the candlestick behind glass, in a case? Not an option if the site is a period house, that prides itself on presenting an authentic experience for visitors. Besides, if the thieves are determined enough, and bring big enough tools (a theme of a recent Europol report about ‘cultural property theft tactics’, that some speakers quoted) they can smash their way through glass, given enough time (which would bring into play how well trained, equipped and motivated invigilation staff are, during opening hours, and the response time of the police when closed). Dan’s talk also showed how ingenious security people can be, to use common intrusion detection and other products, to enable objects to be on show, the very purpose of a museum.
Training
The final speaker of the day was Hannah Miller, a trainer at Andy Davis’ consultancy Trident Manor, who made the case for creating ‘a culture of shared responsibility’, having herself carried out training in the UK and abroad. Andy wound up the conference by re-stating the case for training. As for people who say they cannot afford training: really? He asked. It doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. Even a ten minute ‘toolbox talk’ about security can spread messages, about such basics as closing and locking windows, and inputting an alarm code – knowledge that you should never assume that someone knows. As for where to seek knowledge, ‘to actually reduce the risk to your organisation’, among the UK and overseas bodies with websites around: the UK ARA (Archives and Records Association) security guidance: the US-based security managers’ association ASIS International’s cultural properties community; the UK official National Protective Security Authority (NPSA, also mentioned by Madeleine Farrell for its guidance on risk management and protective security) and the Collections Trust.
Photo by Mark Rowe: Darlington town centre.
