[ Music ]
>>It is quite an overwhelming place, Merv and Turkmenistan
in itself, because it is a sort
of weird melting pot of cultures.
But also geographically this in a way it really was a hub
and it's kind of interesting to think that now,
no one hardly knows anything about it,
they couldn't even point it out on the map.
Now it's you know these sort of mounds
of dusty mud-brick structures so you kind of have
to use a little bit of your imagination.
Heritage Without Borders is a social enterprise
that matches museum and conservation professionals
with people in a developing world who need and want help
to interpret and give access to
and conserve their cultural heritage.
One of our aims was to do as much training
as we possibly could and this included university students
and professionals.
[ Music ]
There's over a thousand small finds on this site
that have been excavated over several years.
These objects are due to be moved to a museum and before
that happens, the site director wanted them
to have some minimal conservation attention.
Some of the objects that we were working with were a lot
of glass objects as well as copper alloys, a lot of coins
from the Islamic period with really amazing script -
Arabic script written on them.
[ Music ]
In September, I went with two volunteers to Sarajevo
and we worked at the National Museum of Bosnia
in Herzegovina there and what we did is carried
out a week-long training course with people
from regional museums and also students
from the local Institute of Archaeology.
We weren't coming over there and saying, "We're from the UK,
this is the only way to do it; we're the best at doing this,"
which of course isn't the case at all.
But we're able to say, "Well this is what we're doing
and this is how you could maybe apply this
to your own collection; how you can use what you have to apply
that to your collection."
The region the Balkans went
through a really tough civil war 15 years ago.
They haven't fully recovered from that and there are lots
of terrors and tensions in the public of society,
in the political situation of the country
that affects the world of heritage, it affects the museum.
Resources; money is always a problem.
Access to materials; if they need materials for conservation,
they have to bring them into the country and it's very expensive.
I think we were really able to present new ideas
in conservation, but also people were able
to create relationships with one another and create a network
that they could take home that really benefited
from these different experiences and a different range of skills.
[ Pause ]
We are hoping to have future projects
to involve the participants from the course as well,
so it's a continuation of learning;
we're not just there for the week.
We wanted the course to be sustainable
and to continue these relationships.
[ Music ]