This workshop was about demonstrating the value of our work in engaging new audiences in the heritage sector. The title ‘Prove it!’ was challenging, with the speakers saying that it is impossible to do this in the field in which we work. It’s about people and what influences them. We can never prove with certainty an absolute link between cause and effect.
Josie Appleton, Journalist and convener of the Manifesto Club
Ken Robinson, Independent Tourism Advisor and Chair of The National Visitor Attractions Forum
Historic buildings are in desperate need of conservation, but should the heritage sector prioritise tackling social issues and targeting new audiences, with so little cash to spare?
Is this a way to build communities and prosperity, or is it just social engineering?
Adebowale doesn’t see an ‘either/or’ situation. She outlines moral and economic arguments to make the case, such as the need to understand that everyone has equal access to our heritage.
Click to download a short statement from Maria Adebowale or press play below:
Appleton questions the obsession with targeting hard-to-reach visitors – you have to accept that some people just aren’t interested. The buildings come first, without them there’s nothing for those who want to see them. Let people choose to visit.
Roberts suggests that if not operating without a sense of social responsibility, we are not doing our jobs. If heritage isn’t pushed, why will people continue to support it? We need to remove barriers.
Click to download a short statement from Liz Roberts or press play below:
Robinson feels that while recognising that heritage projects have social impact, it doesn’t mean those managing them should be social engineers. Social awareness and social responsibility are two different things. Heritage is a social responsibility.
Questions from the audience included:
“I wasn’t interested in heritage as a child yet but my parents were patient with me and I am now, My foster children aren’t interested, should I not bother taking them to historical sites?”
Appleton says childhood is a time when you often do things you don’t want to do.
Click to download a short statement from Josie Appleton or press play below:
Adebowale’s response is that it would be stupid to force people to enter heritage sites against their will, arguing that removing barriers is the fundamental point.
There is only one answer to the question, it is “our place.”
‘There is a great importance with the sectors work to broaden the sense of heritage and what it means to others.’
‘Heritage has wonderful power to create prosperous communities.’
Our notion of heritage has become more inclusive, but how do we make it reflect the communities that make up this diverse country we live in? There is passion across communities to develop and talk about a sense of:
Where do we belong?
How do we build on this together?
Heritage cannot be owned by one class or culture. We have a shared history. But where better to talk about some the issues than Manchester, with its rich past and involvement in the industrial revolution? It’s a knowledge and cultural capital with a rich future. She continues to speak of the regeneration and housing projects that have taken place and are currently under way in the city.
The Baroness concludes by providing an example of an underprivileged area of Birmingham that has been regenerated through a community project and has seen a strong sense of social cohesion and pride in the community’s heritage since.
Click to download a brief soundbite from Baroness Andrews of press play below:
To download a transcript of Baroness Andrew’s speech, click here.
Her speech highlighted relevant points made by David Lammy yesterday, making it clear diversity was a crucial issue.
Who owns history?
We need to say to people that your history is equal to mine.
“It’s also to tell what might be painful histories, and recognising what’s important to those people who have experienced difficult history.”
“I talk about heritage about being who we are and belonging. But the point about us all belonging to one community doesn’t ring true – we belong to more than one community and have more than one story. I’m a black woman from Yorkshire, there is more than one community.”
There is hope that the debate later in the morning will really look at the issues involved and find some answers.
The work of the heritage sector will be about the development of partnerships and recognising that work of other departments and projects are interconnected with our own.
The delegates visiting Manchester Art Gallery were told by Helena Wetterberg, Community Interpretation Officer, that during MAG’s 4 year refurbishment and extension project they re-designed their displays and re-wrote their audience development strategy for newly-defined target groups - which include people with disabilities, black and minority ethnic communities and people from C2DE socio-economic groups. The general strategy has been to adopt a family friendly approach throughout all of the gallery’s work which will encourage visitors from all of these target audiences.
In her newly-created role, Helena told the group she has begun working on an “Opening up Collections” project, to explore new approaches to connect collections and audiences; including expanding their new website, increasing participation in collections-based work through setting up cross-disciplinary working groups and community consultation. They want to “increase participation with the collections and offer a sense of ownership” for the public in general and their target groups in particular. This is part of a national project funded by MLA’s Designation Challenge Fund.
Helena, and her colleague Liz Mitchell, showed the group examples of long-term displays that have been created with the direct involvement of relevant community groups - in selecting the objects to be displayed and how they’re displayed, interpreted and documented.
This workshop contained a variety of opinions from practitioners and disabled people about how to provide ‘access for all’ to heritage. Case studies of projects and reactions to them helped to draw out personal experiences and opportunities to improve current practices and create new methods of developing access.
Exploring the definition of ‘access for all’ drew people away from a focus on physical disability and structural changes, to wider considerations of consultation, inclusion and involvement. Innovative approaches to staff training were considered. Using a site visit as a model for a training video, showing the whole visitor journey, was one idea, creating workshops led by disabled people to spread their knowledge and build understanding amongst staff and volunteers, was another.
Improving accessibility, put simply, makes sense and the involvement of disabled people on the panel, speaking from their own personal experience of disability, and of helping organisations improve their practices provided plenty of food for thought. ‘Nothing about us, without us’ was a strong theme and using this ethos to plan events and design accessibility improvements was an obvious way forward to creating a better solution. Disability organisations can be powerful allies and are happy to provide support – so ask!
As well as asking, a message was to build relationships with local disabled people by involving them in advisory groups. But, how to do this successfully, and keep disabled people coming back to help in many different projects can be a challenge, and was a question in this session. Where to go for help and support, how to strike a balance between conservation and access and is it all about a journey or is there a definite solution were others.
Developing understanding and building confidence go a long way to increasing access for all!
“Imagine you’re stood waiting with 200 kids…..on a harbour wall….waiting for a sailing ship to come in….you can see it in the distance…..but it isn’t getting any nearer….the children wave…..the crew wave back…the tides …no one has checked the tides….the boat can’t get any closer….the children wave….”
A lively session led by Professor Jonathan Drori, Miriam Levin, Ray Barker and Judith Garfield - packed with enough confessional to make your average ‘Take a Break’ reader blush.
The principle aim of this workshop was to help those starting out in the field of community engagement by looking at ways to build staff, volunteer and community group confidence in order to ‘make things happen’.
Delegates broke up into facilitator led groups, then examined either a previously successful or imaginary project.
Factors involved in the planning of these projects would include:
Who’s the target audience?
Where the project site would be located?
What scale it will be produced on?
Whether it will be linked into national initiatives?
One participant comment included, “almost always take longer to complete than you think they will, so this should be taken account of in timescale planning.”
From this rough outline, groups looked at what the high, medium or low priorities would be in the short, medium and long term, and what budget would be allocated to each area.
Some of the issues raised in the feedback were:
Recognise and realise what partners can bring to a project.
Recognise who is doing what to avoid confusion.
Build up the local network to find others interested in the community.
The importance of process as well as end product.
Get your facilitators on board before you make a bid.
Gospodin, Gospođa, dobar dan. Dobro došli u Manchesteru in međunarodi radionica.
If you have any idea what I just said – congratulations you understood four languages simultaneously. Three of those languages are spoken in Bosnia Herzegovina. 1 state, 2 entities, 4 religions, 11 cantons, 14 ministries of culture, 3 so-called ethnic groups in the most genetically homogenous country in Europe.
Welcome to Bosnia Herzegovina – post war, post Dayton Agreement. A country where attempts were made to assert one version of history by the bullet and where other versions were defended with the knife. A country where heritage is political with a very large P.
Jajce stands at the confluence of the Pliva and the Vrbaš. Rather it stands where the Pliva river plunges over a waterfall and causes eddies and whirlpools in the Vrbaš river 20 metres below. This is a place where the bucolic Pliva and its tributaries divide in to a myriad of streamlets running through woodland
The streams running through meadows and harnessed by tiny mills until they unite rapidly and vigorously with the forceful Vrbaš constrained in its gorge below.
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