Conservation, as an emerging discipline, is mutually constituted with the heritage institutions in which it is practiced. Professional conservators have been amending the focus of their work, from attending to the material preservation of heritage spaces, places, and objects, toward the values that people have for their cultural heritage. This chapter describes an alternative conservation product, which is entangled within the multiple interactions between objects and people developed during the conservation event. This reflects a shift in focus from the materials from which conservation objects are composed, to the aspirations of the people who are affected by the conservation of their heritage. This challenges conventional heritage conservation practice, by privileging a community's cultural systems over universalized concepts of heritage. As a result, conservation practice requires principles, policies, and guidelines that help conservators to engage people in decision‐making about their heritage. New frameworks for understanding conservation practice enable creative and diverse solutions within heritage conservation. This is described in this chapter in terms of materials‐, values‐, and peoples‐based approach to conservation. This allows heritage conservation to address the social issues of the present and engage the future, rather than merely seeking to fix the past. In so doing, it validates conservation responses that seek to incorporate the multiple ways that people care for and use their own cultural heritage.

The care of taonga (Maori treasures) outside the Maori community takes place within varying degrees of inter-cultural engagement, in which encounters with the past can be seen to be negotiated through the changing nature of personal and institutional relationships in tbe present. The desire to develop Hinemihi, the historic Maori meeting house at Clandon Park, as a functioning marae (ceremonial gathering place) has provided a challenge to conventional heritage conservation practice. A response to the conservation of Hinemihi has been to adapt practices developed by the Pouhere Taonga I New Zealand Historic Places Trust for tbe conservation of historic marae. The success of this approach relies on tbe formation of an active and sustainable marae community. Therefore, a series of community-based events have been delivered to nurture the developing relationships between Hinemibi and her people as an essential element of tbe conservation project This has questioned the central role of Maori in tbe long-term care of Hinemihi. As a result, tbe formation of 'Hinemibi's People' is an attempt to develop a sustainable conservation community for Hinemibi at Clandon Park that reflects a spatially and temporally grounded reality, based on lived experiences.

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