Festival of Plastics

About this event

With increasing numbers of plastic objects entering all types of museum collections, those caring for these artefacts are facing new and complex challenges. The preservation of plastics is also an active area of research, and since 2017, UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage have collaborated with the Museum of London and Tate to deliver the COMPLEX project.

COMPLEX takes a fresh approach to understanding plastic degradation, and has studied the links between museum storage conditions (such as temperature, relative humidity and the size of storage containers), and object deterioration.

The Festival of Plastics is a chance to hear more from the COMPLEX team, as well as celebrate, discuss, and share ideas on all things plastic!

During the day there will be a keynote talk from Yvonne Shashoua, author of “Conservation of Plastics: Material science, degradation and preservation”. Experts from UCL, the Museum of London, Tate, the Institute of Conservation Modern Materials Network, the Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP) and the Plastics Historical Society will be sharing their expertise through a series of short talks and stalls that guests can visit freely.

We hope that you will come away from the day with more confidence in dealing with the most problematic plastic types, ideas for storage and collections care and tools that you can use to help understand what types of plastics you have in your collections. You will also hear about what’s happening right now in research in this area.

Further information

We may be able to reimburse the cost of some travel within the UK. Please get in touch with bseer-communications@ucl.ac.uk if this would help you attend this event.

This event will take place in the Clore Learning Centre at the Museum of London. Venue accessability information is available on the Museum of London website.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 716390).

Image credit: 'A room full of plastic' photographed by Will Richards