There will a digital option for the open lectures on June 8 and 9. The social and communal values associated with historic buildings, monuments and places are an increasingly important aspect of heritage management and conservation. However, whilst evident in international heritage instruments, as well as national strategies and policies in many countries, there has been less progress in addressing such values in practice.
One of the key hurdles is that the forms of expertise and methods involved in assessing social and communal values have not been included in heritage management and conservation historically. This workshop provides an opportunity for heritage professionals and researchers to discuss and critically reflect on the place of social value in their own work. It will also introduce participants to a range of methods that can be used in the assessment of social and communal values, ranging from researcher-led to community participatory approaches.
Using case studies, we will discuss the ways in which methods can be combined and kinds of knowledge they produce. We will finish by reflecting on the kinds of guidance and support that heritage researchers and practitioners need to apply these approaches in their work with reference to the Social Value Toolkit.
Sign up here. Sign up for the Heritage and Social Value Workshop and the open lectures here. It will explain the Scottish policy context and the funding landscape within which they work as well as highlight how small heritage organisations re-orientate to fulfil a wider range of values, public and social benefit agendas. Reflecting on the impacts of the pandemic for small heritage organisations, she will describe how small heritage organisations adapted and struggled with the loss of income as well as with the concept of becoming digitally purposeful.
She worked for over 20 years as a cultural heritage practitioner with Scottish national heritage bodies before returning to academia in This background shapes how her interdisciplinary research focuses on generating meaningful and impact narratives about value and significance of places and things for people. This involves evidencing how heritage resources are, or could be, relevant to the past and future.
