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'How should decisions about heritage be made?' is an Arts and Humanities Research Council Co-design Development Grant. In early 2013 the project team spent four months working together to explore the issues raised by decision making about heritage and then designed a research project. In our Phase 2 research (beginning in July 2013) the project will to root our bigger concerns with democracy and heritage in specific places and contexts by mapping who makes decisions, when and where. Our methodology, inspired by systemic action research approaches, uses a parallel set of three inquiry strands each oriented to heritage ‘as a system’ in different ways: ‘from within’ (using live projects to trace decision making), ‘experimenting’ (through a co-collecting project at the Science Museum) and ‘interrogating’ (publicly investigating the effects of ‘heritage’ in York). http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/
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How should decisions about heritage be made?: Co-designing and co-producing a research project
July 2013
…the story so far…
AHRC Connected Communities ProgrammeCo-Design Development GrantThe funding was broken into two phases. In Phase 1 (February-May 2013) we designed the research. Phase 2 begins in July 2013 and runs for 12 months.
Martin Bashforth, York’s Alternative History and Radical HistorianMike Benson, Director, Bede’s World Tim Boon, Head of Research and Public History, Science Museum Karen Brookfield, Deputy Director, Strategy, Heritage Lottery Fund Peter Brown, Director, York Civic Trust Danny Callaghan, Independent Consultant and Co-ordinator for Prescot Townscape Heritage Initiative: ‘Building Stories’ and ‘The Potteries Tile Trail’ (HLF All Our Stories).Richard Courtney, University of LeicesterAlex Hale, Royal Commission of Ancient and Historic Monuments ScotlandPaddy Hodgkiss, Riccall Community ArchiveRebecca Madgin, University of LeicesterPaul Manners, Director, National Co-ordinating Centre for Public EngagementJennifer Timothy, Senior Building Conservation Officer, Leicester City CouncilRachael Turner, MadLab and ‘The Ghosts of St Pauls’ project (HLF All Our Stories)
Co-DesignResearch Team
Phase 1: Co-Design phase
Step 1‘Entry Points’
Step 2‘Scoping the
Issues’
Step 3‘New
perspectives’ Step 4‘Making
Decisions’
Step 5‘Drafting of
Phase 2 design’
We planned our co-design phase to have five steps. To make the most of the different perspectives and positions in the team.
Phase 1: Co-Design phase
Step 1‘Entry Points’
Before coming together, we reflected on the question ‘how should decisions about heritage
be made?’ from where we work/liveSee examples of our pre-workshop blogs:Racheal Turner, ‘Madlab, elected officials and community activists’,http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/mad-lab-elected-officials-and-community-activists/Rebecca Madgin, ‘A role for emotional value and place attachment in decision making’, http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/a-role-for-emotional-value-and-place-attachment-i
n-the-decision-making-process/
Phase 1: Co-Design phase
Step 2‘Scoping the
Issues’
In Workshop 1 we had two presentations to get us thinking. The first from Mike Benson, Kathy Cremin and John Lawson about their work
at Ryedale Folk Museum and Bede’s World (key ideas: failure of museum to connect with the people whose history they represent,
space, freedom of self).The second was by Jenny Timothy, Senior Conservation Officer, Leicester City Council who took us through a case study of a planning decision (key ideas: how professionals work with elected officials, who defines significance).
Key Ideas from Workshop 1
Are we talking about the deinstitutionalization of the institution?
Who defines what is significant?
You can’t look at heritage in isolation (need to zoom out)
Messy!
Who is ‘heritage’ for, past, present or
future?
Day in the life swap…Step 3‘New
perspectives’
Danny Callaghan
Mike Benson
Members of the team visited other organisations or groups to share our ideas and see them through
other people’s eyes.
For example…
Step 4‘Making
Decisions’Drafting research aims…
Realized we had broadly shared aims but interested in doing different things
Step 4‘Making
Decisions’Drafting research aims…
Realized we had broadly shared aims…
Step 4‘Making
Decisions’
Understanding better how decisions are currently
made and putting ‘heritage decision making’ in context
Support better (more democratic) decisions to
be made
…but we were interested in doing different things as ‘research’ activitiesSo rather than
seeking consensus, we
explored ideas of what Danny Burns calls
‘parallel action’
‘people see and feel connection between things’; ‘they know it is related to their experience’ and ‘they are energized and motivated’ (Danny Burns, Systemic Action Research: A Strategy for Whole System Change. Bristol: Policy Press, p. 53.
This led to us designing three inquiry strands – but within an
overall framework
An overall framework comes
through our research aims and
questions.
• Can we ‘map’ and ‘model’ ‘heritage’ as a complex system?• Who are the key players? How do they currently interact? How do these
vary in different places? How is planning decision making different from community heritage contexts?
• Where are the different ‘decision-making’ points in ‘heritage’ systems? • How are heritage decisions justified? What ideas are used to justify heritage
decision making? (future generations; significance). What does not get seen as a ‘decision’ which should be?
• What is changing around us which is impacting on how ‘heritage’ works (e.g. Localism Act, public sector cuts, philanthropy, changes in governance structures)?
• What other models of decision making could we draw into a heritage context? (deliberative democracy, associative democracy, horizontal decision making, do-it-yourself approaches)?
• What theoretical and conceptual resources from other disciplines might help (complexity theory, systems theory, actor network theory)?
• How might systemic action research as a means of understanding heritage decision making itself help create changes with heritage decision making?
Research questions:
Aims: Decision making about heritage is difficult. This is partly because heritage decision making has formed around the idea that the interests of people in the past, present and future need to be taken into account and that it is necessary to consider different and sometimes conflicting ideas of what is important or significant. We think we could make heritage decision making easier (and better) if we could identify the ‘boundaries’, ‘sticking points’, ‘blocks’ and ‘exclusions’ in current practices. We will do this through actively drawing on the multiple perspectives and locations of the Research Team, through deploying experimental action research approaches and holding these together with thinking informed by ideas of systems and complexity to generate new insights. Understanding the dynamics of ‘heritage decision making’ in this way will help everyone with a stake to self-consciously develop decision making processes and practices and through this reshape our understandings of ‘heritage’ itself.
Research aims:
Phase 2 – overall research designBig Workshop 1: Mapping and modelling
heritage as a messy system
Inquiry Strand 1: ‘from within’
Inquiry Strand 2: ’experimenting’
Inquiry Strand 3: ‘interrogating’
Big Workshop 2: Revise map/model
Specific impact pathways… own organisations, HLF, HLF applicants, wider practitioners networks, hertiage
studies
Mapping and modelling heritage as a
messy system
Who are the key players? How do they currently interact? How do these vary in different places? How is planning decision making different from community heritage contexts?Where are the different ‘decision-making’ points in ‘heritage’ systems? How are heritage decisions justified? What ideas are used to justify heritage decision making? (future generations; significance). What does not get seen as a ‘decision’ which should be?
What is changing around us which is impacting on how ‘heritage’ works (e.g. Localism Act, public sector cuts, philanthropy, changes in governance structures)?
Inquiry Strand 1: ‘from within’
‘making the familiar strange’
Bede’s WorldPotteries Tile
Trial
RCAHMS and Clyde project
Leicester and planning decisions
self-reflection – how does it work here?
critical friend
Exploring our overall research questions with people locally
Members of the research team with live projects will work with a
‘critical friend’ (one of the university-based researchers on the team)
to actively reflecting on their own decision making and explore our
research questions with people they collaborate with locally
Inquiry Strand 2: ’experimenting’
What should we collect?
And what issues are raised by us
asking you?
We will work with a recruited group of people who will be invited to make
recommendations for what might be added to the Science Museum music
technology collections. Alongside this they will also work with Tim Boon,
Richard Courtney and Helen Graham to reflect on the questions raised by this:
What is expertise? What makes decisions about collecting legitimate?
Inquiry Strand 3: ‘interrogating’
Is heritage good for York? (we’re
debating the precise question at the
moment)
Grassroots ‘Public’ inquiry
Use of big data Events
Participatory exhibition
Strand 3 in an interrogation (from the outside) and does this by launching a
from below public enquiry into whether heritage is good for York.
The whole research project will be covered and investigated by Hive
Radio, a community radio team based at Bede’s World.
Phase 2 – research design. The different phases feed into each other, we will also
constantly increase the numbers of people we are involving in the project.
Mapping and modelling heritage as a messy system
Inquiry Strand 1: ‘from within’
Inquiry Strand 2: ’experimenting’
Inquiry Strand 3: ‘interrogating’
Revise map/model
Specific impact paths… own organisations, HLF, HLF applicants, wider practitioners networks, heritage
studies
Keep in touch…Blog:
http://codesignheritage.wordpress.com/
JISC Mailing list: http://bit.ly/YWWnXP
Email: [email protected]