The Conference
Your Place or Mine? was a major national conference taking place in Manchester 2nd – 3rd November 2006, run by English Heritage with the National Trust.
It was the first opportunity for policy makers and practitioners to come together to discuss the issue and share good practise around engaging new audiences with heritage, in particular by people who traditionally feel excluded from participation, including Black and Ethnic Minority groups, young people, people on low incomes and people with disabilities.
Both days were packed with debates and discussions, exploring the big questions that broadening access to heritage challenges us to explore: whose story are we telling? Do we need to redefine ‘heritage’? What do roots, identity and sense of place mean in today’s society?Â
There were also twenty practical workshops led by experts from community groups, and heritage, arts and cultural organisations. These cover topics from how to engage young people with heritage to involving communities in re-interpreting historic properties, from understanding the needs of different social and cultural groups to embedding culture change across organisations.
Â
Delegates could experience sites visit in Manchester, performances, a poet-in-residence and Exhibition Space where organisations showcased interesting and innovative case studies.
The Blog
This Event Blog is both a record of events as they happen at the conference – the key debates and lessons learnt in the workshops – and your chance to join in both during and after the event itself.
Whether or not you attended the conference, you can still add your thoughts, points of view and questions on key issues through the ‘Join the Debate’ button at the end of each post.
Through this site, we hope that Your Place or Mine? will have a lasting legacy which goes beyond the two day event in Manchester and will be a useful resource for everyone interested in engaging new audiences with heritage.
The Future
This blog site will be updated in the weeks following the conference, with more information from the workshops, including downloadable handouts, summaries of all sessions and audio/video interviews with key speakers.
We want this site to grow so if you would like us to link to your website or blog, please contact the editor.
Please do keep checking out the site and add your voice to the debates. Alternatively, receive automatic updates by entering your email address in the ‘updates’ feature to the right of this post.
Note to people posting on the Blog
The aim of this blog is to report on events and comments. If you feel that your comments have been misrepresented in the editorial postings please inform the editor so an appropriate correction can be published. In the event of genuine error, we will publish a correction. We do not moderate reader comments to editorial posts. If an incorrect comment has been submitted there is an automatic right of reply/correction by submitting a subsequent comment.
And finally, please leave your ideas through ‘Join the debate’ to the opening question, “What more can be done to represent everyone’s heritage?â€
Miriam Levin
Head of Outreach
English Heritage
yourplace@english-heritage.org.uk
Â
I work with an urban re-generation project in Southampton. Your event looks really interesting. What I see everyday is that people who live in the area i work with do take pride in where they live. it’s quite a modern place, basically being a housing estate. i think people see heritage in modern places as being more about the people that make up the place than the environment around them. The residents often talk about people who were / are local legends, and less about the architecture. for example, there’s a guy called bob marchant who was a really active resident, who made things happen and people respected. can’t wait to see what comes out of your event.
Hi Richard,
Thanks for sharing your views. It’ll be interesting to see how other ‘commenters’ experiences compare to yours!
Hopefully you ticked the ‘Notify me of followup comments via e-mail’ below and will be able to keep track of the conversation.
All the best,
Matt (Event Blog editor).
One of the best things in the North West that has been done to get heritage discussed around by more people has been Blackpool’s bid for world heritage status. From only a few people in Blackpool identifying their heritage as important, suddenly it was talked about everywhere - excellent publicity for Blackpool internationally, something the local paper is really running with, and of course people on the street have been talking about it too and feeling a fresh pride in Blackpool. We all need a trigger for our enthusiasm and interest and this one will add to the visitor economy too.
Good point, Andrew. I wonder if having world heritage status will bring about new economic benefits too? Perhaps it’ll engender a positive self fulfilling prophecy, leading to increased opportunities for Blackpool residents!
Matt (Blog ED - as i’ll call myself from now on)