Introduction to Heritage Planning

About this course

Heritage conservation is not only a matter of mortar and timber. Before a building is repaired, someone has to decide that it is worth repairing — and then justify that decision under the Ontario Heritage Act, defend it at a council table, and manage the change that follows.

This four-day course introduces the theoretical and practical sides of heritage conservation planning in Ontario. Participants work through the history of the field, the legal framework that governs it, the processes used to inventory and evaluate cultural heritage resources, and the ethical questions that practice raises. The teaching combines lectures, guest speakers, site tours, group work, and in-class activities.

The course is suitable for all levels of knowledge and experience. Attendance at all four sessions is required.

Who it’s for

Past offerings have drawn a deliberately mixed room: mid-career professionals, municipal staff and heritage committee members, planners and architects seeking grounding in conservation, tradespeople whose work brings them into contact with designated properties, and community volunteers who care about the buildings around them. There are no prerequisites.

What you’ll cover

• Foundations — what heritage and heritage planning are, why nomenclature matters, and how equity, diversity, and inclusion bear on the field
• A brief history of conservation — the international, national, and provincial evolution of the practice
• Regulating heritage — the international, national, provincial, and municipal frameworks, including the Ontario Heritage Act and its regulations, with a hands-on exercise in reading a by-law
• Understanding your resource — inventory and evaluation, and the three steps to understanding a cultural heritage resource
• Trades and planning — how conservation decisions meet the hands that carry them out
• Ethics, human rights, and human remains — the harder questions of practice
• Managing change — how conservation accommodates a building’s continuing life
• Disaster and risk management — planning for the worst, and the temporary protection plan
• Archaeology — archaeology 101 and its intersection with planning
• Emerging issues — sustainability, accessibility, housing, intangible heritage, insurance, and real estate

Participants work in small groups on a heritage planning case study, presented on the final day. Walking tours of Perth’s heritage fabric form part of the teaching — the town itself is the case study closest to hand.

Certificate

Participants who complete all four days receive a certificate of completion, presented at the close of the final session.