Dear colleagues in ICOM Australia,

Dr Viv Golding's talk at this year's Museums Australia conference in Perth was one of the conference highlights. Viv is from Leicester University in the UK and she spoke about developing creative connections at museum frontiers, encompassing her work in looking at diverse ways in which museums might widen there audience beyond the "traditional" museum visitor.   Her participation at the conference was supported financially by ICOM Australia. This is one way in which we foster the roles of museums, drawing on ICOM's international mandate.

Your ICOM Australia executive have been very active this year in implementing ICOM's mission in Australia. This ranges from the basic but vital process of managing ICOM memberships, so that we can all enjoy the benefits that showing the ICOM card brings, especially when we travel internationally, to making available anumber of awards and bursaries.

At the Perth conference we recognized the career achievements of Vinod Daniel in international museum relations, especially, in Vinod's case, in materials conservation. We also recognized the work of the exhibitions and cultural collections teams at the Australian Museum for the international links built with communities in Papua New Guinea as part of the Museum's Birds of Paradise exhibition.

ICOM Australia also continues to support the programs of the Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA) through supporting the attendance of Tarisi Vunidilo, PIMA's Secretary General, at various conferences and workshops.

We are the international counterpart of Museums Australia and in that capacity ICOM Australia advocates on issues of international interest concerning museums and related matters. This year we made a strong submission on the Australian Government's discussion paper on potential immunity from seizure legislation for Australia (a copy of this submission is available on the ICOM Australia website). We continue to strongly support measures to counteract illicit trade in cultural material, and to promote the ICOM Red List of stolen and looted cultural heritage.

In June this year I attended the ICOM annual meeting in Paris at the ICOM HQ. We are working hard to improve the effectiveness of those annual gatherings and I am part of a small working party established by ICOM to propose ways to try and do just that. In Perth at the Museums Australia conference I also spoke in the closing plenary session of my aspirations for improved representation of museums at the global level, but most particularly in the Pacific rim and basin. I will continue to advocate for this and explore ways of achieving it, in partnership with other institutions in the Pacific area.

In 2012 we will continue the broad range of ICOM Australia activities, and aim to improve our website and services on behalf of ICOM.

I want to particularly thank my colleagues on the ICOM Australia Executive, and to thank all of you as ICOM members for you support of the essential work done by museums and related bodies. Have wonderful celebrations at the end of 2011, and see you in 2012!

Frank Howarth,

Chair, ICOM Australia.