TRAINING IN BEIJING: REPORT OF THE TRAINING COMMISSION

China is a country with a quarter of the world's population and Beijing is one of the fastest growing and most exciting cities in the world. In this fascinating surrounding the big ICA Congress, which is only organised every 4 years, took place. More than 2,500 delegates from over 130 countries met between 2-7 September 1996 at the Beijing Convention Center in the North of the Capital, which is full of skyscrapers, many auto routes and incredible traffic.

The ICA Congress was the background for the very interesting Pre-Congress which assembled 60 participants at the Friendship Hotel near the People's University of Beijing. Half of this group were delegates from China - among them the staff of the 4 year training course of archivists at the People's University. China is a country in which archivists have a very good level of training and a high social standing. This is due to the long history of Old China and the pride in the economic evolution in the last 15 years. The rest of the participants of this Pre-Congress came from countries where audiovisual archives have problems with technical facilities, high humidity and the lack of money.

The Pre-Congress was in effect a one week course on the theme of restoration, and the speakers came from England, Sweden, Canada and China, but the participants came from Namibia and Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Yemen and Trinidad, Pakistan and Botswana, Ghana and Belize, South Africa and Lithuania, Thailand and Malaysia, Singapore, Egypt and Cuba, Korea, Mongolia, Colombia and from all parts of China. This group of archivists was trained by Helen Forde of the Public Record Office in London, by Ingmar Froyd of the Uppsala University Library and Louis Cardinal from the National Archives of Canada, and I did a half-day lecture about restoration of video tapes and films in my function as Chair of the AV-Commission of ICA and as Head of the FIAT Training Commission.

The quality of this Pre-Congress was very high and the results were very interesting. To sum up, every archivist of the mentioned countries - most of them in a developing area - have, more or less, large audiovisual collections. Television companies in these countries rarely have the time or the interest to save old productions and the archivists have not got the knowledge, the facilities or the money to save the audiovisual memory of their countries.

In comparison to the big Congress, where it is impossible to get good contact with all the delegates, the Pre-Congress had a very nice familiar structure; we had to be together all week; we were brought to some archives and to some training places in Old Beijing; we spent the leisure time and the meals together and as a result of all the communication problems (there are very few Chinese who speak fluent English) we had no possibility to leave our international archive family. So, now I really have a good overview of many countries FIAT until now has had no real chance to exchange information with or find contact persons in and the interest in FIAT videos and FIAT papers was extremely high. Maybe we will get some new members from Yemen and Pakistan or maybe from Namibia and Malaysia, but it is no good if we recruit them for our organisation and they then have not the means to join our seminars and meetings. The Pre-Congress in Beijing was financially supported by the State Archives Bureau of China as well as by UNESCO and ICA, and all the participants were invited with flight and lodging paid for and some pocket money was given to all delegates. So, one result of this Pre-Congress and the familiar situation is that FIAT and ICA should together try to find regional experts which would be the information specialists for, for example, West and South Africa.

1 year ago Mr. Kloppers, from Namibia, was announced as head of the AV-sub committee of ESARBICA, one of the ICA Regional Branches, whose current president is Marie Olivier from South Africa. Now, my proposal is to arrange - maybe in November 1997 - a two or three day regional seminar in South Africa which will be organised by Mr. Kloppers and which will cover all the countries of Eastern and Southern Africa. But we have to get some money for this meeting - maybe from ICA, UNESCO and FIAT - to invite maybe 10 persons from these regions. One of the most likeable participants of the Pre-Congress - I think he was the youngest delegate of the Beijing Congress - was the very well educated Mr. Moises Chadreque Chongo from Mozambique. He would be a good candidate for such a meeting, but his monthly salary is so low that he would need one years income just for the flight to South Africa, maybe we could give him a 1 - 2 year grant? I propose that FIAT use some of the training budget for such a South African meeting and we should try to get the same sum from UNESCO. If FIAT covers the cost of 3 delegates it would mean a sum of around 6,000 Swiss Francs, not much for FIAT but for many countries in this region it is a large amount. FIAT could start with the regional training for developing countries together with ICA. If this project goes well we should continue with similar projects in other parts of the world, maybe in Malaysia or Senegal (i.e. West Africa) or Latin America.

To sum up: The training of AV technicians, the interest in new technical developments like CD-ROM, Internet and digital data synopsis is enormous world wide. The problems with shelving and humidity control and damage to old video tapes are also enormous and the answer can't be that we send them some papers and video tapes and "catch" them as new members and then nothing happens. We have been talking about these ideas for a long time but this year, for the first time at a FIAT Conference, we had the chance to listen to a speaker from an African country: Mr. Mbaye of Senegal. He was also a participant at the Beijing Congress and I first met him 4 years ago at the previous ICA Congress in Canada. By coincidence, the first colleague I met at the Beijing Congress in the registration area was Mr. Mbaye, and for the past few years I have had a very fine friendship with the French Ambassador in Dakar/Senegal. So I am sure that my connections with West Africa, the French speaking West Africa, will also be continued after the FIAT Conference in Paris. A third point for the Training Commission is the project we will develop for the next FIAT Conference in Budapest. You will hear more about this in the open forum where the Director of the Bosnian TV Archives will speak about his problems. And you might remember the proposal of Mr. Bubenik of Croatia, at our last meeting, to prepare some activities for the reconstruction and exchange of AV-archives in the former Yugoslavia. I want this to be a main topic for the Budapest Conference and maybe we can get some money for this project from the European Community.

So the programme of the Training Commission for the next one or two years is very important but there is one simple fact: without money, it makes no sense! So please support the projects for this Commission. It is time not only to speak but to act!

Dr. Peter Dusek
Training Commission