The philosophy of the University of Canberra toward teaching, research and partnerships is applied professional scholarly practice.

To implement that educational philosophy, to shape the program and to maintain coherence, the Institute is developing three themes in its approach to cultural heritage:

• Culture: integrating the three cultures of heritage
• Language: implementing an applied and accessible scholarship
• Craft: developing the motion of hands and minds together

The Three Cultures of Heritage

The first theme that informs the assumptions of the Institute is Jacob Bronowski's notion of the three cultures that underpin civilisation. Bronowski's explanation of the integration of science, the humanities and administration predates C.P. Snows notion of the two cultures - arts and science. Bronowski was a rare intellectual and scholar at home with the complexities of cosmology and physics as well as philosophy and history. He also understood deeply and explained lucidly to his listeners the logic and necessities of administration as a field of expertise. We strive to follow Bronowski proposition, in the teaching and study of cultural heritage, that the three cultures must surely come together science, the arts and administration. In the context of cultural heritage, this applies to understanding significance, to the preservation of significant things and places and the organisation of collections, practices and places.

Applied and Accessible Scholarship

Cultural heritage also represents popular interests, national identities, scholarly understanding. The language and symbols of cultural heritage are at once complex and profound and simultaneoulsy common-place and banal.

In conveying language and symbols, Donald Hornes written and spoken language was inclusive and accessible, whether on culture, society, politics, science or administration. In the best sense, Donald Horne was a plain communicator. In conveying complex ideas and contentious arguments Horne never resorted to exclusive technical language, nor jargon, nor cliche. Initially as a political conservative, then as a social democrat, a republican and a liberal humanist his impulse, almost without exception, was to write and speak in plain language, directed to the widest possible audience. His objective was to persuade, educate, enlighten and enthuse.

Hands and Minds

The third theme is about combining knowledge with skills. Richard Sennet elegantly and persuasively expresses this principle in his book of 2008, The Craftsman. Sennet argues against his own deeply admired teacher, the great twentieth century philosopher Hannah Arendt, who distinguished a creatively enriched worker homo faber, the creative human, from a debased labourer animal laborens  those condemned to the drudge of repetition.

Sennett sets out to redeem the idea of repetitious work around the central idea of acquiring skills and thus depth level of knowledge. Mastery a complex skill, Sennett estimates, takes ten thousand hours of work, of endless cycles of repetition and variation to reach for perfection. To play a musical instrument, to paint well, make a clock or become an accomplished batsman, to cook, to embroider, to . This is not just accomplishment but mastery.  Mastery, through the knowledge and skill, through the mind and the hand, through thoughtful practice.

Sennett asks what "the process of making concrete things reveals us about ourselves, Learning from things requires us to care about the qualities of the cloth or the righ way to poach fish; fine cloth or food cooked well enables us to imagine larger categories of good. Friendly to the senses, the cultural materialist wants to map out where pleasure is to be found and how it is organized, Curious about things in themselves he or she wants to understand how they might generate religious, social or political values." p. 7-8.