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: h.graham@leeds.ac.uk