AEPM annual conference 2025

Exploring printing heritage in theory and in practice

The AEPM annual conference is being hosted this year by the Centre for printing history and culture (CPHC) and  Winterbourne House & Garden at the University of Birmingham (UK). The theme of the conference is the relationship between printing history and heritage sites that are custodians of the material evidence of print.

Over the past few years, digital humanities and craft revival have prompted a resurgence of interest in analogue forms of communication and the technologies that enabled them. Once dominant printing processes such as letterpress and off-set lithography are now commercially obsolete. The numbers of people trained in historical printing techniques are declining and heritage organisations often struggle to find the space, resources, or know-how to curate their printing collections. Usable equipment and material are becoming increasingly scarce, and those with the knowledge to repair and restore it are a dying breed. Preservation requires documentation, interpretation, and practice but also imaginative approaches to their adaptation and use in the present. Heritage sites provide the raw material—artefacts, machinery, documents, and archives—and experiential environments by which historians can understand the situations and locations of printing. On the other hand, printing historians produce the necessary context—information, data, interpretation, and scholarly assessment—necessary for the heritage sites to effectively exploit their collections and interpret printing history for a wide audience.

This conference will consider the role of printing heritage in the twenty-first century and discuss the interdependent relationship between heritage sites and printing historians — how it works, how it could it work, the benefits, problems, and possible new models for working.