Engaging Heritage Engaging Communities

International, multi-disciplinary perspectives on the key question of community engagement in theory and practice in a diverse range of heritage settings. Across the global networks of heritage sites, museums, and galleries, the importance of communities to the interpretation and conservation of heritage is increasingly being recognised. Yet the very term "meaningful community engagement" betrays a myriad of contrary approaches and understandings. Who is a community? How can they engage with heritage and why would they want to? How do communities and heritage professionals perceive one another? What does itmean to "engage"? These questions unsettle the very foundations of community engagement and indicate a need to unpick this important but complex trend. Engaging Heritage, Engaging Communities critically explores the latest debates and practices surrounding community collaboration. By examining the different ways in which communities participate in heritage projects, the book questions the benefits, costs and limitations of community engagement. Whether communities are engaging through innovative initiatives or in response to economic, political or social factors, there is a need to understand how such engagements are conceptualised, facilitated and experienced by boththe organisations and the communities involved. Bryony Onciul is Lecturer in History at the University of Exeter; Michelle Stefano is the Co-Director of Maryland Traditions, the folklife program for the state of Maryland and Visiting Assistant Professor in American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Stephanie Hawke is a project manager and fundraiser, working on a range of projects aiming to engage communities with culturalheritage. Contributors: Gregory Ashworth, Evita Busa, Helen Graham, Julian Hartley, Stephanie Hawke, Carl Hogsden, Shatha Abu Khafajah, Nicole King, Bernadette Lynch, Billie Lythberg, Conal McCarthy, Ashley Minner, Wayne Ngata, Bryony Onciul, Elizabeth Pishief, Gregory Ramshaw, Philipp Schorch, Justin Sikora, Michelle Stefano, Helen Tully, John Tunbridge.

This volume brings together the experiences and research of heritage practitioners, archaeologists, and educators to explore new and unique approaches to heritage studies. The last several decades have witnessed a rapid increase in the field of cultural heritage studies worldwide. This increase in the number of studies and in interest by the public as well as academics has effected substantial change in the understanding of heritage and approaches to heritage studies. This change has also impacted the perception of communities, how to study and protect the physical residues of heritage, and how to share the knowledge of heritage. It has brought the issue of who has knowledge and how the value of heritage can be shared more effectively with communities who then ascribe meaning and value to heritage materials. Heritage studies, until a few decades ago, exclusively studied the material culture of the past as part of elitist approaches that completely neglected communities’ rights to knowledge of their own heritage. Additionally, heritage practitioners and archaeologists neither shared this knowledge nor engaged with communities about their heritage. Communities were also mostly deprived from contributing to heritage and archaeological studies. This kind of top-down approach was quite common in many parts of the world. But recent studies and research in the field have shown the importance of including the public in projects, and that sharing the knowledge produced through heritage studies and archaeological works is significant for the protection and preservation of heritage materials; it has finally been understood that excluding the public from heritage is not ethical. This publication presents a wide array of case studies with different approaches and methods from many parts of the world to answer these questions.

This book addresses long-held beliefs about the nature of engagement between heritage professionals and the wider public. It was published as a special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.

There is no limit to what constitutes heritage. By definition, heritage is the use of the past for present purposes. Yet, to any given group or population, heritage can be a multitude of things and can serve a variety of purposes. Based on shared memory, heritage can be tangible or intangible, boundless in variety and scope: it can be, for example, objects, landscapes, food or clothing, music or dance, sites or statues, monuments or buildings. Importantly, however, heritage also has many and varied uses and powers. It can be used to control, to unite, to engage, and to empower people, communities, and nations. In this interdisciplinary volume, authors from around the world explore how different communities, nations, and groups intentionally and creatively use heritage, both tangible and intangible, in a wide variety of ways to positively address social and environmental issues. Significantly, these studies demonstrate how heritage can be an exceptionally valuable tool for political, economic, and social change. Insightful studies are presented pertaining to heritage as social memory, including the nationalistic political use of heritage, heritage as resistance to political powers, traditional knowledge as environmental science, heritage for legal and community action, heritage for building peace, heritage for Indigenous and minority empowerment, and heritage for exploring the past through phenomenological methods. The goal of this volume is to move beyond seeing heritage as only social memory, a mere interpretation of static past events, people or places, and instead explores critically the variety of ways heritage is engaged in the present and can be in the future.

The internet as a platform for facilitating human organization without the need for organizations has, through social media, created new challenges for cultural heritage institutions. Challenges include but are not limited to: how to manage copyright, ownership, orphan works, open data access to heritage representations and artefacts, crowdsourcing, cultural heritage amateurs, information as a commodity or information as public domain, sustainable preservation, attitudes towards openness and much more. Participatory Heritage uses a selection of international case studies to explore these issues and demonstrates that in order for personal and community-based documentation and artefacts to be preserved and included in social and collective histories, individuals and community groups need the technical and knowledge infrastructures of support that formal cultural institutions can provide. In other words, both groups need each other. Divided into three core sections, this book explores: - Participants in the preservation of cultural heritage; exploring heritage institutions and organizations, community archives and group - Challenges; including discussion of giving voices to communities, social inequality, digital archives, data and online sharing - Solutions; discussing open access and APIs, digital postcards, the case for collaboration, digital storytelling and co-designing heritage practice. Readership: This book will be useful reading for individuals working in cultural institutions such as libraries, museums, archives and historical societies. It will also be of interest to students taking library, archive and cultural heritage courses.

Cultural heritage communities of interest have increasingly expanded from cultural heritage professionals to volunteers, special interest groups and independent citizen-led initiative groups. Digital technology has also increasingly impacted cultural heritage by affording novel experiences of it – it features in a number of activities for all the aforementioned groups, as well as acting as support for visitors to cultural heritage centres. With different degrees of formality and training, these communities are increasingly defining and taking ownership of what is of value to them, thus reconfiguring the care, communication, interpretation and validation of heritage. Digital technology has played a crucial role in this transformative process. In a fully international context, cultural heritage practitioners, community champions and academics from different fields of study have contributed to this book. Each chapter brings to the fore the multiple relationships between heritage, communities and technologies as a focus of study and reflection in an inclusive way. Contributions touch upon present and future opportunities for technology, as well as participatory design processes with different stakeholders. This book brings together ideas from different disciplines, cultures, methods and goals, to inspire scholars and practitioners involved in community heritage projects.

This book traces the development of 'community archaeology', identifying both its advantages and disadvantages by describing how and why tensions have arisen between archaeological and community understandings of the past. The focus of this book is the conceptual disjunction between heritage and data and the problems this poses for both archaeologists and communities in communicating and engaging with each other. In order to explain the extent of the miscommunication that can occur, the authors examine the ways in which a range of community groups, including communities of expertise, define and negotiate memory and identity. Importantly, they explore the ways in which these expressions are used, or are taken up, in struggles over cultural recognition - and ultimately, the practical, ethical, political and theoretical implications this has for archaeologists engaging in community work. Finally, they argue that there are very real advantages for archaeological research, theory and practice to be gained from engaging with communities.

Peter G. Gould seeks to identify the success factors associated with economic development projects within communities adjacent to archaeological or heritage sites, a growing interest among archaeologists and heritage managers. Typically, the success of site museums, tourism businesses, or crafts cooperatives is rarely reported on in scholarly literature or subjected to systematic study. This book addresses that gap. Gould argues that the success of community projects is inextricably linked to the mechanisms community members use to govern their project activities, and provides a much-needed assessment of the issues relating to community governance. Drawing together insights from economic analysis, political science, tourism scholarship, complexity scholarship, and the governance of non-profit enterprises, Gould suggests a model for community governance and illustrates the workings of that model through four case studies. Armed with this book's theoretical foundation, heritage professionals will have practical approaches to consider when designing community economic development projects.

A guide for families of all backgrounds to celebrate cultural heritage and embrace inclusivity in the home and beyond. Gone are the days when socially conscious parents felt comfortable teaching their children to merely tolerate others. Instead, they are looking for a way to authentically embrace the fullness of their diverse communities. A Place to Belong offers a path forward for families to honor their cultural heritage and champion diversity in the context of daily family life by: • Fostering open dialogue around discrimination, race, gender, disability, and class • Teaching “hard history” in an age-appropriate way • Curating a diverse selection of books and media choices in which children see themselves and people who are different • Celebrating cultural heritage through art, music, and poetry • Modeling activism and engaging in community service projects as a family Amber O’Neal Johnston, a homeschooling mother of four, shows parents of all backgrounds how to create a home environment where children feel secure in their own personhood and culture, enabling them to better understand and appreciate people who are racially and culturally different. A Place to Belong gives parents the tools to empower children to embrace their unique identities while feeling beautifully tethered to their global community.