Historic environment and heritage management projects, resources, commentary and analysis by Profs Ian Baxter (Heriot-Watt University) & David Gill (UEA)
How do you explore decorating a rounded, three-dimensional object? What can inspire you? The Cambridge ‘Not praising, burying‘ workshop drew on inspiration from 8th century BC funerary pots decorated with Geometric figures. The texts acknowledge the ‘signatures’ found on much later Athenian black-and red-figured pots, and allude to the poetic process of creation in this stimulating environment.
Others adopted a more contemporary feel.
David Gill joined a day workshop at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge last week to explore themes emerging from Artful Crafts, co-written with Michael Vickers. The day, “Not praising, burying” had been organised by Dr Alana Jelinek, Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellow in the Creative and Performing Arts with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.
Participants will then attempt to understand its implications through a process of making, not replicas of past red- and black-figure pottery, but renegotiations of the proposed type of object in the light of this new understanding. Other formal contributions to the discussion will include an art historian’s and a philosopher’s response, though every participant is expected to participate fully in the discussion in order to understand afresh these supposedly well-understood objects. The process of making and thinking, where thinking informs making and making informs thinking, will be highlighted in this workshop, not the newly created vessels as product. These are to be understood as mere by-products of a larger artistic process. The process used in the workshop will be documented and presented as an artwork at a later date.
There is a follow-up seminar at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Cambridge on Thursday 8 November 2012 (see BBC).
We are very excited to be the first UK University to join The Heritage Alliance. Our plans for developing heritage teaching, research, knowledge transfer and community engagement fit very neatly with the Alliance’s longstanding expertise in working as the umbrella body for historic environment third sector organisations.
I have spent the past three days back in Scotland, visiting a number of old colleagues to rejuvenate ideas various on tourism and scenario planning in heritage. Along the way I have fitted in some fieldwork to gauge the seasonal changes in visitor patterns in redesigned or reinterpreted sites, and also to look at the pre-Christmas retail offerings. I have called in to Stirling Castle, Glasgow’s Gallery of Modern Art, the Lighthouse, Edinburgh City Art Centre, the National Museum of Scotland, but didn’t quite have time to get to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery before heading to the train from where I am writing.
Firstly, the sites seemed quieter than usual, despite it being the English half-term which often sees a boost for family visitation to the central belt Scottish cities in the late shoulder season. The weather was also against the visitor, being grey and wet. But, the space at the sites gave me more of a chance to do some people-watching (I wouldn’t call it sophisticated enough to be ethnographic analysis), and I observed some interesting behaviours. It is very apparent how the physical spaces and the interpretative tools interact with each other in a dynamic way, but not always in a symbiotic or intentional way, despite most likely being a part of an overall attraction interpretation master plan. At Stirling, the costumed interpreter in the newly displayed Royal Palace apartments seemed on this occasion to be completely surplus to requirements, as the majority of the visitors were either shepherded by a site steward as part of a tour, or had mobile audio tours which they were fiddling with when not glued to their ears. At the National Museum meanwhile, the superb space in the main atrium was positively muted, and the space (now without fish ponds or cafe area which caused a great compulsion to linger) seemed to dwarf people who reacted by scurrying through to find galleries away from an unwelcoming empty space. The mammoth “wall” of artefacts wasn’t catching people’s attention as intended and seemed relegated to wallpaper. These are observations rather than criticisms, as I have seen both spaces and interpretive tools being used very effectively together at other times. It got me thinking about the factors that influence elements of a site working as a whole and how the planning process and operational sophistication of these sites can sometimes look completely awry.
The changes in the retail offer across the sites was also interesting, and I note a continual widening in the range and quality of items “branded” from the host organisation, as they see the retail offer as part of a cultural positioning and wider brand development. A growing amount has been written on this area in the past few years, and very recently Professor Sharon MacDonald turned her attention to this area in a research seminar at York University, which is well worth watching. I didn’t find the Christmas presents I was going to strategically buy early, but I suppose it gives me a good excuse to do some more comparative analysis at some other sites.
As part of the academic development of heritage as a subject at UCS we are launching a discussion group to consider all aspects of the subject and share ideas and thoughts via talks, debates and other activities. We aim to gather once a month or so in Ipswich, and welcome participants from across the University and wider heritage field of East Anglia. Our first gathering will consider Rodney Harrison’s new book, Heritage: Critical Approaches (2012: Routledge), with the possible questions:
1) Whilst heritage is a phenomenon that can be recognised, can it ever aspire to being a recognisable ‘subject’ ?
2) Does Harrison’s approach strike the correct balance between theory and practice, and where do the nuts and bolts of managing the historic environment fit with these ideas?
We are planning to meet at the UCS Waterfront building at 4.00pm, on Thursday 22nd November.
To confirm your intention to attend, please email Julie Barber julie.barber@ucs.ac.uk in the School of Business, Leadership & Enterprise.
Standing at the west end of the Athenian akropolis the viewer is faced with a dilemma about the heritage. The main entrance to the akropolis was constructed in the third quarter of the fifth century BC as part of the Periklean building programme. But the Attalid dynasty from Pergamon (in modern Turkey) constructed a victory monument on the north side. This in turn was remodelled in the early Roman imperial period.
So this Hellenic monument can be linked to a range of modern nation states.
This afternoon I attended a joint lecture on “The Landscape of Suffolk” by Peter Holborn and Edward Martin at Endeavour House, the home of Suffolk County Council in Ipswich. The starting point was a consideration of the soils of Suffolk, and one of the early publications was the Historical Atlas of Suffolk (1988) by Dymond and Martin. The lecture considered greens across the county, as well as the feature that 20% of all known moated sites in England and Wales are to be found in Essex and Suffolk. There was a consideration of hedging methods that are peculiar to Suffolk, and even the tracing of a hedge noted in a Saxon will.
Different landscapes were considered including parks and Breckland, as well as the coastal strip. We were asked to consider if ‘Sizewell’ has now become an icon for the Suffolk coast.
Wider environmental issues were considered such as the growing deer population in Suffolk, and the newly recognised ash disease (discussed on Today earlier in the day).
The lecture closed with a series of challenges such as the appearance of pylons and wind turbines in the landscape, as well as the conversion of traditional buildings.
Hello, we’ve got some exciting plans at UCS to develop heritage as a new subject area within the university. UCS is small enough to be able to do things a little differently, having been created by UEA and Essex just five years ago as a new university to establish a permanent higher education institution within Suffolk. David Gill was appointed just over a year ago as Professor of Archaeological Heritage and head of the Humanities Division in the School of Arts & Humanities, and I was appointed just over a month ago to head up a division within the School of Business, Leadership & Enterprise, which I haven’t quite sorted the name out of.. It has focused to date on tourism, events and hospitality, but given the wonderful waterfront location of the campus, and the team’s ambitions for the subject area (to date led by the tourism degree suite leader, Anita Beresford-Webb), I am subtly morphing the name into a division of tourism and heritage. Anyway, over the past month David and I have been hatching plans based on our academic and professional activities to work strategically together to build a strong teaching and research base in heritage management and heritage studies which complements the existing UCS provision in the two schools (faculties) in history, English, tourism and management. Much activity has gone on already, with Anita developing a foundation degree and Bachelor of Arts in Management of the Heritage Sector, many of our tourism and events students undertaking professional work-based learning in heritage sector organisations, and David being involved in a variety of public engagement projects, such as the Managing a Masterpiece landscape partnership.
We’re going to use this blog to chart our progress as we create new links and develop new ideas within the university and with the wider heritage community at a local, regional, national and international level, and we hope that it will provide an opportunity to engage with us along the way.
