To celebrate the International Day for Monuments and Sites 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 Committee will begin to shape its responses to these challenges, drawing on national and international thinking and practice. Please join us 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.

Our 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.

Event Schedule

5.00pm: arrive and welcome, chance to visit the museum

5.30 – 7.00pm: talk and discussion

7.00 – 8.30pm: drinks reception in the museum exhibitions

Further details to be announced.