Who Needs Experts?

Counter-mapping Cultural Heritage

John Schofield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409439349
• eBook ISBN: 9781134764846
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

Taking the significant Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe 2005) as its starting point, this book presents pragmatic views on the rise of the local and the everyday within cultural heritage discourse. Bringing together a range of case studies within a broad geographic context, it examines ways in which authorised or 'expert' views of heritage can be challenged, and recognises how everyone has expertise in familiarity with their local environment. The book concludes that local agenda and everyday places matter, and examines how a realignment of heritage practice to accommodate such things could usefully contribute to more inclusive and socially relevant cultural agenda.

Chapter 1

Heritage Expertise and the Everyday: Citizens and Authority in the Twenty-first Century

John Schofield

A few years ago, English Heritage ran a recruitment campaign under the banner: ‘England’s Heritage: It’s Ours.’ The meaning was innocent enough, promoting the agency’s expertise and prominence in safeguarding England’s historic environment. But it had an unfortunate double meaning and was swiftly withdrawn. A similar strapline now might read: ‘England’s Heritage: It’s Yours.’

Heritage is changing as heritage has always changed. One might argue that without change heritage would not exist, at least not in any meaningful and socially relevant way. What comprises our ‘heritage’ changes of course with the passage of time. New things are added to old things as the past grows ever deeper. But this book is not so much about how the content of heritage is changing and expanding, so much as how the very concept is being realigned. Heritage, simply, is something everyone can (and to an extent does already) engage with. Yet stakeholders other than authoritative, elected or appointed heritage experts often feel unconfident or unqualified to articulate views on the heritage they value, perhaps because they are not familiar with the professional language of heritage, or are wary of expressing personally held views in the context of rational or ‘scientific’ enquiry. Thankfully this is where the most important change is occurring. People not only have an interest and a stake now; they also have a voice and increasingly there are mechanisms to ensure those voices are heard. And here we do come back to content, because what these many, diverse and often disenfranchised people are telling us can be surprising. These multiple views of heritage, of what matters and why, take us beyond the conventional boundaries of heritage. They take us beyond its comfort zone, from the special and the exceptional places and things, to the everyday.

This then is a book about those people whose views are increasingly a part of heritage discourse. It explores what they are saying about heritage (although this is often not the word they use) and why heritage practitioners and policy makers should listen, not merely to satisfy some social or political obligation, but because what they are being told is both interesting and important in terms of how particular places and things are sustained in the future. Heritage, one might suggest, is as much about people as it is about place. This book closely reflects that view.

This short opening chapter gives context to a collection of essays which together suggests a realignment of the very foundations of cultural heritage, of what it is, how society decides what matters, and how we ensure that a full range of views are represented in heritage discourse. The chapter approaches these questions by addressing three core principles which arguably give shape to a new approach to cultural heritage, one that is participatory, bottom-up and fundamentally grounded in local concerns and interests, albeit set within a broader national and international framework. Retaining a system that works from the top down, driven by heritage authorities without regard for the individual, the local and the everyday, is not only outdated but will prove impossible to sustain, I would argue, in a world where local values and concerns are increasingly driving regional and national agenda. The Council of Europe’s (2005) Faro Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society (Council of Europe 2009: 211–20, and online at http://conventionsxoe.int/Treaty/en/Treaties/Html/199.htm, accessed 12 January 2013) is an example of an emerging and radical heritage agenda. An earlier European Landscape Convention (Anon. 2008 and online at http://wwwxoe.int/t/dg4/cultureheritage/heritage/landscape/default_en.asp, accessed 12 January 2013) bears a similar message. An emerging focus on localism in the United Kingdom is illustrative of what specifically may emerge on a broader scale in the years ahead. The three core principles are that:

1. Heritage is everywhere;

2. Heritage is for everyone; and that

3. We are all heritage experts.

Heritage is Everywhere

Landscape is heritage; heritage is landscape. And landscape, as we know, is everywhere. But if we adopt this broad characterization of cultural heritage, is there anything that does not come within its remit? Certainly not in the context of this volume, and in the opinions of its authors. People have long taken interest in their surroundings, neighbourhoods and local places. Places form the punctuation marks of human experience, just as routeways are the sentences that connect those places, being literal and metaphorical narratives of a journey made, or connectivity across landscape. The landscape is full of stories, and stories make memories. It is those memories that create our conceptions of heritage, and which make it inevitable that we attach value to the places that matter to us. And it is the inevitability and universality of valued places filling our world that give heritage such social significance and purpose (e.g. Byrne’s ‘heritage as social action’, 2008). For all of these reasons, heritage has become central to our experience of the world. As suggested earlier, not everyone will refer to this as heritage, but heritage it is – not a thing so much as a construct, something we think about, create and compartmentalize in terms of the memories, stories and values we attach to particular places or things.

We all recognise heritage as encompassing the iconic places of deeper history, places associated with notable events and Individuals who did more than most to create the contemporary world. We are all familiar with castles and great houses, the ruins of past civilizations and examples of monumentality. These exist the world over, their universality recognised through myriad approaches to heritage protection Including UNESCO World Heritage status. But to limit our definitions to only these things is to misunderstand the nature of heritage. Some countries’ legislation restricts the definition to buildings or places over 50 years old. Not only does this deny the existence of modern heritage, of the heritage we ourselves create, but more significantly it serves to disenfranchise whole communities who only value their familiar surroundings; who have no Interest in Stonehenge, or other iconic monuments on the World Heritage List, yet they may value the place they were born, or a garden, or a street corner for some memory associated with It. Think of this In archaeological terms: the archaeological resource accumulates, creating ever deeper deposits representing the human experience over millennia, centuries, years, days. Some people (archaeologists for example) can think in these terms, placing daily experience within that deeper context. Others (arguably most people) cannot do this, and see the world largely in terms of their own personal experiences, and those of the generation before them. In archaeological terms this view relates only to the ground surface. But for archaeologists the ground surface matters just as much as buried deposits, and together these related contexts create the record of past human experience. It makes no sense to ignore the surface, whether in archaeological or cultural heritage terms. And it is at the surface where most people encounter the past.

But there is a fundamental difference between archaeological remains and cultural heritage. Archaeological remains comprise a tangible thing – whether places or artefacts. Cultural heritage is not a thing. Heritage is something we have ourselves invented as a construct to facilitate the management and presentation of specific (often archaeological) things. In that sense heritage does not exist (Smith 2006). Heritage Is a matter of perception. We have laws that relate to specific parts of the heritage, because they meet certain criteria or serve a particular role (e.g. in terms of national Identity, or for ‘outstanding universal value’), but heritage is not confined to those things. Everything has the potential to be heritage If we wish It to be, and – as the Faro Convention makes plain – everyone should be able to decide what their heritage should be, and how they want to describe It.

Heritage authorities have come close to representing this broader view through a methodology that draws critique (often from members of the heritage establishment) precisely because of Its lack of discrimination and selectivity. Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) emerged in the 1990s as an approach to mapping the distinctiveness of landscape gauged in terms of the historic processes that have shaped it over time. Why do places look the way they do, and what makes them distinctive? Contentious was the fact that rapid assessment of mapped evidence and archaeological data glossed over detail which some felt essential to developing a full understanding of landscape history. More contentious to some was the deliberate avoidance of objective discrimination: HLC is value free; it does not rate some types of character above others. Everywhere has character because everywhere there is landscape. There is no such thing as ‘bad’ character.

Graves-Brown’s chapter exemplifies this point, noting how – alongside well-known and well-documented places – the world is populated with liminal and interstitial places, many of which were never even planned to be there; they just were. The chapter argues that such alternative places play a vital role in society, specifically as places where alternative lifestyles are played out, or where protest occurs. It is Important that, in taking a wider view of heritage, we recognise the significance of such gaps, in between places where something different can emerge. These gaps form an important component of our landscape. Byrne makes similar points specifically within a context of multiculturalism, noting how we all make places that are invisible to others, largely because often we leave little behind. Yet these places are immensely valuable to the (often migrant) communities who create and use them. And as Byrne concludes, heritage discourse as currently established tends to obscure this reality. In both of these chapters, and in Kiddey’s contribution, connections between people and landscape are strongly expressed through Individual stories. Graves-Brown tells his own story about ‘The Old Bag’s Way’, and Byrne about Hesham’s ‘backyard world’. Kiddey presents an alternative view of two well-known British cities. In Bristol and York homeless communities have been. Involved in a mapping project to both engage disenfranchised and typically marginalised communities within heritage practice, and to facilitate the participation of homeless people in fieldwork. We hear from Jane (Bristol) and from Mark and Dan (York) about their experiences of their landscape; what they value and why. For Jane it is a makeshift shelter behind a restaurant, and for Dan and Mark a place by the river where they can reminisce. In both cases there are places and there are routeways which connect these places. But Mark and Dan’s ‘Cider Route’ is more than just a routeway. It is also a process through which they use everyday places on the route to Invoke ‘good memories’ of other places, times and events to which they feel attachment. These are Important contributions, demonstrating that even the hidden area behind a restaurant – an area most people won’t ever have visited or even know about – is part of the landscape, and someone’s heritage.

Buildings that are uncompleted can also fulfil this role. Monuments of Iceland’s economic collapse are suggested by Pálsson and Björnsson as crucial to understanding the ‘becoming’ of present-day Reykjavik. The ‘ruins’ are almost Iconic, and certainly markers in the contemporary landscape. But markers of what? These are temporary homes, places of protest and subversion against the culture of consumption that nearly bankrupted the country, and places of creativity, makeshift art galleries for those wishing to explore these complex relations that characterise the contemporary landscape.

All of these chapters argue for a new approach to cultural heritage. The 2005 Faro Convention provides the closest definition yet of the type of inclusive heritage these authors promote. The Convention argues that cultural heritage,

… is a group of resources inherited from the past which people identify, independently of ownership, as a reflection and expression of their constantly evolving values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions. It includes all aspects of the environment resulting from the interaction between people and places through time.

This is a useful definition. It sees heritage as resources, and resources identified by the people who relate to them. It includes ‘all aspects of the environment’ thus recalling the European Landscape Convention’s definition of landscape as ‘everywhere: in urban areas and in the countryside, in degraded areas as well as in areas of high quality, in areas recognised as being of outstanding beauty as well as everyday areas’ (Anon 2008: 405). And it refers to values, beliefs, knowledge and traditions which are ‘constantly evolving’, and not stuck at a particular point in time. The contemporary landscape features prominently in this volume, specifically in terms of post 1950 changes and additions to the ‘historic’ landscape that existed before.

This brings us to the second principle.

Heritage is for Everyone

The 2005 Faro Convention is very clear on this: that everyone in society has the right to participate in the heritage of their choice, and that this right accords with their basic human rights. While some member states may feel reluctant to endorse this European convention, its principles can nonetheless form the basis for a new approach to heritage and public engagement with it, in much the same way as the principles of the Australian Burra Charter (Marquis-Kyle and Walker 2004) were adopted beyond its country of origin. But it is not only Faro. As we have seen, the 2000 European Landscape Convention defines landscape in terms of perception and recognises that landscape has a ‘public interest role in the cultural, ecological, environmental and social fields’ and is a ‘key element of individual and social well-being and that its protection, management and planning entail rights and responsibilities for everyone’ (Anon 2008). In 2008 English Heritage issued its Conservation Principles, noting significantly that the ‘historic environment is a shared resource’ which people value, and which ‘each generation should therefore shape and sustain … in ways that allow people to use, enjoy and benefit from it, without compromising the ability of future generations to do the same. Heritage values represent a public interest in places, regardless of ownership’ (2008: 19). A further conservation principle is that ‘everyone should be able to participate in sustaining the historic environment, by having the opportunity to contribute his or her knowledge of the value of places, and to participate in decisions about their future, by means that are accessible, inclusive and informed’ (2008: 20).

This emphasis on inclusivity is represented also in heritage values. English Heritage’s Conservation Principles for instance define ‘communal value’ as ‘deriving from the meanings of a place for the people who relate to it, or for whom it figures in their collective experience or memory’ (English Heritage 2008: 31). Social value is further defined as being associated with,

places that people perceive as a source of identity, distinctiveness, social interaction and coherence. Some may be comparatively modest, acquiring communal significance through the passage of time as a result of a collective memory of stories linked to them. They tend to gain value through the resonance of past events in the present, providing reference points for a community’s identity or sense of itself. (2008: 32)

But nowhere is this idea of ‘everybody’s heritage’ better or more strongly expressed than in the 2005 Faro Convention, which recognises:

• The need to put people and human values at the centre of an enlarged and cross-disciplinary concept of cultural heritage;

• That every person has a right to engage with the cultural heritage of their choice, while respecting the rights and freedoms of others, as an aspect of the right freely to participate in cultural life enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948); and is

• Convinced of the need to involve everyone in society in the ongoing process of defining and managing cultural heritage (Faro Convention 2005).

But how does this translate into practice? Dierschow’s persuasive exploration of how the lesbian, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Heritage Expertise and the Everyday: Citizens and Authority in the Twenty-first Century
• 2 Revisiting the Dewey–Lippman (1925–7) Debate, Faro and Expertise in the Humanities
• 3 Ethnography of a ‘Humble Expert’: Experiencing Faro
• 4 Old Bag’s Way: Space and Power in Contemporary Heritage
• 5 Counter-mapping and Migrancy on the Georges River
• 6 Faro and the LGBT Heritage Community
• 7 More than a Sensitive Ear: What to Expect of a Professional Expert
• 8 Who Would Believe Experts? Interrogating the Discourses of Archaeologists and Interest Groups in Two Recent Heritage Disputes in Ireland
• 9 Cinema under the Stars, Heritage from Below
• 10 Finding People in the Heritage of Bankside, Southwark
• 11 Punks and Drunks: Counter-mapping Homelessness in Bristol And York
• 12 Local World Heritage: Relocating Expertise in World Heritage Management
• 13 Contesting the ‘Expert’ at the former Bradford Odeon, West Yorkshire
• 14 A Most Peculiar Memorial: Cultural Heritage and Fiction
• 15 Reykjavik’s Abandoned Building Sites: Heritage of an Economic Collapse?
• 16 What Was Wrong With Dufton? Reflections on Counter-Mapping: Self, Alterity and Community
• Index