From 10 – 12 April 2024, Gateway Antarctica hosted the PoleSTAH conference in Christchurch. It is the polar heritage organisation including Science, Technology, Arts and History (PoleSTAH). We had 3 days of high quality presentations, and we covered the Arctic and Antarctic and the challenges heritage faces in times of climate change. Another aspect of the conference was the inclusion of indigenous people in the North and South.
Gordon MacDonald (Canada) and Bryan Lintott (Norway) were the driving forces to bring this conference on its way and Wolfgang Rack and I were the co-convenors on the ground. Without the help of our administrator Mary Botting, it would have not been possible to organise everything to make this conference a success.
Next to the presentations, we were 19 people in the room and 60 online participants, there was a field trip to the Scott Statue in the inner city of Christchurch and to Ferrymead, the open air museum that holds many artefacts, especially an airplane that the US Americans gifted the City of Christchurch. Gabriela Roldan from the Antarctic Heritage Trust gave the conference participants a chance to experience a virtual visit in Hillary’s hut. A visit at the University of Canterbury wind-tunnel lab was for many a great experience. A project in conjunction with the Antarctic Heritage Trust worked on ways of how to keep the moisture out of the preserved Antarctic huts.
A lucky coincidence was that an Aerospace event was held in town. On 10 April, 3 presenter from Gateway Antarctica have shown their work in the Antarctic with help from the air – satellites. Many of the conference participants attended this even. It fitted perfectly into the topic of the conference.
It was a very intense experience during the preparation phase with all the time differences to communicate how the conference will take shape, but we did it and the feedback was that the participants were satisfied with the course of the event.
Dr Ursula Rack 