Cancellation of the AEPM’s annual conference in Offenbach

A message from the chair of the AEPM.

It was with heavy heart that the AEPM announced several days ago the cancellation of its annual conference which had been programmed for the end of May. The decision was of course inevitable given the progression of the coronavirus epidemic in Europe. Registrations for the conference had already stopped abruptly several weeks ago as our members and other likely participants began to urgently revise all travel plans. Our hosts – the Klingspor Museum and the Haus des Stadtgeschichte – who had been monitoring the situation closely for some time took the final decision in close concertation with their municipal and regional authorities. As has already been mentioned in announcements of the cancellation elsewhere on our website, all existing registrations will naturally be fully reimbursed and for the moment it would appear that, under these exceptional circumstances, hotels, rail services and airline companies are doing their best to facilitate cancellations and refunds.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of you who were planning to attend the conference or who had already registered for your understanding in the face of the inconvenience that the cancellation will inevitably cause. I would also like to thank the speakers, the staff of the Klingspor Museum and the Haus des Stadtgeschichte and their numerous partners for all the effort that they put into preparing the event up until the very last moment. Hopefully their efforts will not have been for nothing because our Offenbach colleagues are already looking at how the event might be reprogrammed next year.

Further information will be sent to members of the AEPM concerning the annual general meeting of the Association which was due to take place on the occasion of the conference. Although it will probably not be possible to organise the next AGM before 2021, we will do our best to keep members fully up to date with the Association’s finances, the results of our activities in 2019 and the progress of current projects in 2020.

In the meantime our website and Facebook pages will do their best to collect and share information on how printing museums and our many partners in the world of graphic heritage are coping with the current situation.

On behalf of the board of the AEPM I wish you all health and serenity for the troubled months which lie before us.

Alan Marshall
Chair, AEPM